


Stay Close to Me

by dierdele



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Early Relationship, M/M, Separation Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-02-26 13:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18718201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dierdele/pseuds/dierdele
Summary: The five times Dele got separation anxiety and the one time it was Eric.





	1. The Run

The first time it happens, Eric is out for a run. 

It’s nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary. Just his normal, Sunday morning run through the quiet woods just north of his house.

Dele has stayed over enough times now to know that Eric is gone for around an hour every Sunday morning as he wrestles himself into running gear and fills himself with fresh, countryside air. Eric isn’t entirely sure what Dele does in this time, whether he sleeps through it or gets up and makes breakfast or stays wrapped up in Eric’s bed scrolling through Instagram. But either way, he knows Eric will be gone for an hour. 

That’s why Eric doesn’t take his phone, because it’s just one more thing to carry and Eric likes to shut off from the digital world when he can. His Sunday morning run is one of those times. He doesn’t need music to run and he doesn’t need to track his distance - he’ll listen to the birds and just run until his legs can’t hold him up anymore.

When he creeps out of the bedroom at 8:30am, Dele is still fast asleep. He’s curled up beneath the duvet, warm and settled and hugging Eric’s pillow to his chest. Eric gets ready as quietly as possible, but he stumbles while stepping into his shorts and Dele mumbles Eric’s name into the pillow. Eric pauses, waiting to see if he will wake up, but Dele just lets out a soft whine and then quietens again.

“Back soon,” Eric whispers when he presses a kiss to Dele’s forehead. Dele makes a noise in his throat but still doesn’t wake up. Eric takes one last look at him before gently closing the bedroom door behind himself.

He drives himself to the woods and parks up in the vacant lot. The sun beams down on him, already warming his path through the trees, and he wonders if he should try and make it all the way down the lakes and back today. He figures it will probably be about 10km, give or take. 

As his feet hit the ground, he feels his lungs begin to open up in his chest. He takes slow, deep breaths and finds his jogging pace.  _ It’s not a match,  _ he tells himself as he forces his legs to slow down.  _ Take it easy.  _

After fifteen minutes of jogging, Eric’s mind starts to wander. He’s no longer focused on his distance markers because all the trees he’s passing have blurred into one. Instead, he thinks about what Dele might be doing. If he’s up yet, if he’s had breakfast, if he’s remembered to turn the boiler off for the day after showering.  _ Probably not. _

Dele staying over and sleeping in Eric’s bed and making himself breakfast is all very new. They don’t have a name for it yet, don’t have the vocabulary to begin to explain it to anyone else. They refer to it as _this_ but neither of them know what _this_ is. Just, whatever they’re doing in the moment, Eric figures. If they’re cuddling on the sofa, Dele’s head resting on Eric’s chest, then that’s what _this_ is. If they’re on the pitch training, throwing insults at each other and generally being annoying, then it’s _that,_ too. If they’re having sex in Eric’s bed, mapping out each other’s bodies, then that’s _them,_ _us, this._ All of it. Eric doesn’t know what the words are yet. 

He once asked Dele if they were dating and Dele pressed his finger to Eric’s mouth and shushed him, shaking his head. So Eric had more or less put  _ this  _ after ‘just friends’ but before ‘dating’. That was until later the same night when Dele had sleepily told Eric if they ever get married, it has to be in Portugal and not in England. So, something more than just friends, not quite dating, but potentially involving marriage.

After that, Eric had stopped trying to put a name to it. 

It’s not until he’s reached the lakes that Eric realises just how long he’s been lost in his thoughts. He’s probably just over 5km now and is starting to feel the burn in his chest. His legs are tiring and his breathing is becoming heavier, but he’s in the swing of it now and he likes to have this time to just  _ think,  _ so he pushes himself to run around the lake before heading back. 

It really does take everything out of him. By the time he gets back to his car, he’s almost falling apart. He’s ran every ounce of energy out of him and now he’s ready to collapse back into bed and sleep for three hours. 

He heaves himself against his car and rests for a moment, gasping for breath as he leans his forehead down against his arm and closes his eyes against the burning of lungs. His breathing gradually steadies, and Eric takes some time to stretch out his muscles before he cramps up.  _ To the lake, around the lake, and all the way back.  _ Maybe closer to 15km.  _ Need to drag Dele out to do this one weekend.  _

He imagines wrestling Dele out of bed to take him on a 15km run. He’s fairly certain Dele would fight him to the death before he agrees to that. So, maybe somewhere between ‘would marry me’ and ‘would kill me’. 

On the drive back to his apartment, Eric switches to Radio 5 and hopes that Dele is still asleep and not using up all the water in one of his ridiculously long showers. He hopes that he might even be able to shower and then jump straight back into bed, pretend he never left. He hopes he might get a few more hours sleep before Dele eventually gets bored of waiting for him to wake up and pulls back to duvet with a heavy, expectant sigh. 

He’s still thinking about crawling back into bed when he pushes the key into the front door and swings it open. He’s thinking about curling up against Dele and kissing the back of his neck when he steps inside his house and peels off his trainers to leave in the shoe rack. 

He’s thinking about what to make them both for breakfast when suddenly there’s a pair of footsteps stampeding down the stairs, and then there’s Dele, furious and frantic, throwing his arms around Eric’s neck and squeezing him so tightly that Eric struggles to breathe. 

“Hey,” Eric says, desperately trying to free himself from Dele’s grasp. His heart is already racing. “Hey, what happened? What’s wrong?”

Dele buries his face into the crook of Eric’s neck and tightens his hold. Eric presses him away, concern bubbling up inside him. 

“Del, Del, hey, what’s wrong?” He lifts Dele’s head out from his neck and his entire body goes cold when he sees Dele’s tear-stained face. 

Dele shakes his head, unable to muster the words, and Eric automatically jumps to the worst possible conclusions.  _ Family, friends, the dogs, the club _ . Something has happened.

“I thought-” Dele begins, his voice high-pitched and choked. “You-” 

“I what?” Eric asks, he holds Dele by the shoulders and searches his face for some sort of clue as to what might have happened. He’s never see Dele this shaken up before. “Dele?”

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” Dele manages, his voice small and broken. He shrugs, laughs despite himself, and wipes his cheek with the back of his hand.

Eric is still trying to process everything, so he just stares at Dele blankly. “What?” He says eventually, confusion making him frown.

“I didn’t know know where- I thought…” Dele stumbles over his words, shaking himself out of Eric’s hold. He steps back and covers his face with his hands. “Sorry.” 

“You thought I wasn’t coming back?” Eric repeats slowly, mulling the words over. They don’t make any sense at all.  _ Why would I not come back?  _ “Like to Spurs? Next season?” 

“No-” Dele sighs, defeated. He shakes his head and swallows thickly. “Here. I don’t know. I just- I saw your phone on the kitchen table and you weren’t here and you were gone for so long and I started to worry because why would you  _ not _ take your phone, Diet?”

Realisation washes over him. Dele thought he  _ wasn’t coming home.  _ All because he left his phone on the kitchen table - something Dele would never dream of doing when leaving the house. He wonders how far Dele let his imagination run away with him. Where did he think Eric had gone? What did he think had happened? How could be really think Eric would ever leave his dogs, leave  _ Dele?  _

Eric laughs softly and wraps his hands around the back of Dele’s neck, holding up his head and forcing Dele to meet his gaze. “I can live without my phone, Del.” 

Dele nods, letting a small, exasperated laugh escape him. “I know you can. I’m stupid. I’m sorry- I’m just. I don’t know- the phone and- and… you said yesterday how you felt the season was getting on top of you and I panicked and-” 

“But not you,” Eric adds quietly, wanting to derail Dele’s train of thought before it goes any further. Dele stops talking and lifts his gaze back to Eric’s. He chews on his bottom lip nervously, shooting Eric a questioning glance.

“What do you-”

“I can live without my phone but I can’t live without you. Of course I was going to come back.”

Dele stares at him for a moment before sinking into Eric’s chest, exhaling softly against his neck. Eric suddenly remembers the full conversation from the night before. The one where he vented his frustrations to Dele about the season, about Poch, about his own performance and his injuries. The one where he said  _ don’t you ever just want to run away from it all?  _ And the one where Dele had said  _ please don’t ever do that.  _

Eric hadn’t meant any of it, of course, but apparently Dele had taken it to heart. 

“Wouldn’t leave you,” Eric mumbles against the side of Dele’s face. He presses a kiss to his temple and lightly scratches the back of Dele’s head. 

“Thank you,” Dele whispers.

So, more than friends, not quite dating, might get married, might kill each other, but definitely can’t live without each other. 

_ Sounds about right.  _


	2. The Rumour

The second time, Eric should have seen it coming. 

The rumours were everywhere. On Instagram, Twitter, the sport news websites, even the commentators were now talking about it at matches.  _ Eric Dier to leave in the summer transfer window? _

Eric really doesn’t give the rumours the time of day. He’s never once considered leaving Spus in the summer, and as far as he’s aware, Poch isn’t planning on pushing him out. It’s just more speculation based on, well, nothing at all. Maybe Eric looked sad after losing a game, or Poch rolled his eyes in a certain way. Eric knows from experience that these things are always taken wildly out of context. 

So he ignores the rumours, and so does everybody else. Nobody brings it up in the dressing room, nobody pulls him into a meeting to discuss signings, and nobody presents him with any  _ actual  _ offers. The transfer rumours go as far as Twitter and Instagram. Usually, that wouldn’t matter at all, except that Dele spends a good 60% of his day on Twitter and Instagram. 

Which is why Eric should have seen this coming. 

It starts the night before, when Dele stays over at Eric’s. They have dinner together, watch Cheaper by the Dozen, and then get angry at each other for cheating on Fifa. Eric makes up for it by leading Dele upstairs and figuring out all the different way he likes to be kissed. He makes up for it by trailing his mouth down Dele’s body and stopping where Dele bucks his hips against him. He makes up for it by sucking a love bite on to Dele’s collar bone and whispering  _ mine. _

That’s when Dele first flinches. It comes out of nowhere, a quick, nervous shudder. He digs his fingertips in to the back of Eric’s shoulder blades and pulls him down to hug him tightly. 

Eric takes his hand out of Dele’s boxers and repositions himself so that he’s not completely crushing him. He tries to settle at Dele’s side, but Dele clings to him, apparently wanting to keep all of Eric’s weight on top of him. Eric almost laughs at the absurdity of it. 

“Del,” he says quietly. He doesn't know why Dele is gripping him so tightly, or why he’s burying his face into the side of Eric’s neck like that. He tries again to inch himself off of Dele to allow him some room to breathe, but Dele still seems intent on keeping Eric firmly where he is. 

“Don’t go,” Dele says hurriedly against Eric’s neck.

Eric opens his mouth to reply but can’t find the words.  _ Don’t go? Don’t move? I’m literally crushing you.  _ He laughs softly and braces his knees either side of Dele’s hips, giving himself the advantage he needs to finally pull himself out of Dele’s grasp. 

He straddles Dele’s waist and looks down at him with a bemused smile. “What’s got into you?” He asks, but Dele isn’t smiling back. His hands grab up at the front of Eric’s shirt. He balls the material up in his fists, almost tearing the shirt. Eric peels Dele’s fingers away and frowns. “Dele, what are you doing?” 

“Just don’t,” Dele mumbles, almost childishly. He looks angry, and then hurt. He grabs the shirt again, tugging on it to encourage Eric to come back down to him. 

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t.”

It’s the only word Dele can manage and Eric is getting a little frustrated. He doesn’t know what’s happening, or what he’s done wrong. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to  _ not  _ do. Not pull away? All he’s done is sit up. 

He thinks back to what he was just doing before Dele shuddered in his arms. His hand was in Dele’s boxers, his knee easing Dele’s legs apart, his mouth was on Dele’s neck.  _ Mine.  _ The word had slipped out of him before he could stop it.

Eric closes his eyes and exhales.  _ Shouldn’t have said that.  _ They’ve already established this. Not dating, not together, just fooling around. Dele isn’t his, and maybe that’s why he’s annoyed now, grabbing at Eric’s shirt because he doesn’t know what else to do, doesn’t know how to be mature enough to tell Eric  _ I’m not yours and you can’t call me that.  _

Eric rolls himself off of Dele and leaves Dele looking cold and defeated, his legs still slightly parted and his eyes wide and upset.  _ What, then?  _ Eric thinks.  _ What can I call you?  _

They’ve been fucking for two months now. Dele has made jokes about them getting married in Portugal. Eric just… he wants Dele. Properly.  _ Officially.  _ It doesn’t have to be official to the world, but to them, at least. 

Eric hugs his knees to his chest. He reminds himself that this is still new and fragile and Dele doesn’t do well with ownership. He has issues with who he does and doesn’t belong to, and Eric knows that, needs to be considerate of that. It’s not Dele’s fault he’s grown up with abandonment issues, that he’s had to build barriers to protect himself from the world. 

“I’m sorry,” Eric says quietly. He feels the guilt tearing at him from inside.  _ You don’t just get to own him because you’re fucking him,  _ he tells himself. 

Dele stares at him with the same wide, upset eyes. He can see Dele’s jaw tighten, can see him physically swallowing down the pain in his throat. It makes Eric’s heart hurt to see such a visceral reaction from one word. 

“I’m sorry, Dele,” Eric says again. He can’t bear to look at Dele like this, can’t bear what it’s doing to him. He needs to busy himself for a few minutes so he can compose him and pull himself together. This isn’t them. The silence, the tears brimming in Dele’s eyes, the sharp pains in Eric’s chest where the truth swells - _I want you to be mine but you’re not_ - it’s not them.

“I’m going to go let the dogs out,” Eric says. He shuffles off the bed and walks across the room, grabbing his dressing gown as he goes. 

“You’re really going to leave?” Dele asks as Eric reaches the door. His voice is broken and small. Eric doesn’t know what to say to him. He knows he should stay at talk it out, or take it back, reassure Dele that this is still just casual. But he can’t. He doesn’t want to do that. 

“I’m coming back,” Eric replies, because he will. He just needs a few minutes. 

“Nobody ever comes back, Diet,” Dele spits. His eyes go cold and dark, and for a moment Eric is frozen on the spot, unable to free himself from the weight of Dele’s disappointment. Then Dele turns over, hauling the duvet up over himself, and Eric closes the door and trudges down the hallway. 

The dogs seem to sense Eric’s distress. They sit at his feet in the garden and rub their heads against his legs while Eric leans against the patio door, staring up at the moon. The air is warm and gentle, but Eric’s thoughts are all over the place. He’s trying to work out exactly where Dele’s head is at. He guesses somewhere inbetween  _ you have to stay with me  _ and  _ but I need to be able to leave at any moment.  _

The moon and the warm, humid night air offer no answers, so Eric ambles back inside and puts the dogs to bed before heading back upstairs, where he’s assuming Dele might now ignore him for the night, or pretend to be already be asleep. 

But Dele isn’t pretending to be asleep. When Eric pushes the door open, he finds Dele sitting in the middle of the bed with his knees draw to his chest and his head slack in his folded arms. He looks up when Eric walks back in and Eric can see that he’s on the verge of crying, or maybe smashing something.

“Del-” Eric begins, but Dele cuts him off angrily. 

“I thought this club meant something to you. I thought we said we’d always stick it out, no matter how bad it got,” Dele pauses for a moment before shaking his head. He wipes his eyes quickly before the tears can fall. “That’s what you said!” He shouts. 

Eric puts the pieces together as quickly as he can. Dele’s hurt, the frustration, the fact that he didn’t eat breakfast this morning even though Eric made him pancakes. The way he was scrolling through Instagram before aggressively throwing his phone down onto the sofa. The way he’d held on to Eric like he’d never get the chance to do it again. The  _ don’t go.  _

The rumours. The transfer rumours. He should have seen this coming. 

Eric wants to slap himself for being so stupid. 

He shakes his head wordlessly and walks over to the bed. “For fuck sake Del,” he begins, annoyed at himself, at Dele for believing it, at this whole situation for getting so out of hand. “I’m not leaving Spurs,” he says defiantly.

Dele swallows thickly, but still won’t take Eric’s hand when Eric’s reaches out for him. “But you- you said you were sorry.” 

Eric sits down on the edge of the bed, smoothing out the duvet beneath him with his hand. He looks at Dele and shakes his head again. 

“I thought you were mad at me because I called you mine. That’s why I was apologising.” 

Dele stares at him, his eyes searching Eric’s face. 

“You thought I was leaving Spurs?” Eric continues. 

“It’s everywhere,” Dele chokes out bitterly. “Eric Dier to Real Madrid.” 

“Yeah, on holiday,” Eric chimes, knowing Dele will remember their little joke about the last lot of transfer rumours that were spread about Eric.

The tension in Dele’s voice breaks up as a small, somewhat pained laugh escapes him. “So… you’re not leaving?” 

“Not leaving.” 

“You must have seen them, the rumours?” Dele adds, tilting his head to look at Eric carefully. “You never said anything. You were so quiet about it.” 

“I knew it wasn’t true, so there was no reason to bring it up.” Eric smiles sadly. “I hadn’t anticipated that you might believe them.” 

“I should have known,” Dele sighs, pressing his fingertips against his eyelids. Eric moves over to him and takes one of Dele’s hands into his own, watching as they both curl a finger around each other. “Should have known Madrid would never have you,” Dele adds quietly, smirking a little. 

Eric gives him a look but smiles anyway. He feels his own tension wash away when Dele laces the rest of his fingers with Eric’s. 

“I will though.” 

“You’ll have me?” Eric says, laughing lightly. 

“Someone has to,” Dele grins. 

Eric uses his free hand to tilt Dele’s chin upwards. He presses a gentle kiss to Dele’s lips and Dele leans in for another, and then another. He mumbles a quiet “sorry”, but Eric kisses it away.

The sad truth is that Real Madrid would never take Eric, and Eric knows that. He’s okay with that, especially if it means Dele will take him instead. 

And if Dele can’t be his just yet, then that’s fine too. Eric will wait. He supposes it doesn’t really matter anyway.

_ Because I’m already yours. _

And that seems like a pretty good place to start. 


	3. The Staircase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a little bit angsty! 💖

The third time, Eric  _ does  _ see it coming. 

It’s just after international break, when they’ve got a few days off before they need to head back to training for Spurs. Mostly everyone just stays at home, happy to have the downtime. But Eric has never been one to sit around doing nothing, so, as always, he plans a short trip to Portugal to see his friends and family. It’s always a dizzying, whirlwind tour, four nights in two cities with three different groups of people. It leaves him exhausted and a little travel sick, but he does it every time there’s a break because otherwise he doesn’t get to go home often enough. 

He tells Dele about it weeks in advance and the first time, Dele shrugs it off and rolls his eyes, tells Eric  _ I’m sure I can live without you for a few days, Diet _ . Eric had smiled and clipped him around the back of the head for his snarkiness, mumbling  _ no you can’t.  _ They set off across the training pitch and didn’t talk anymore about it.

The second time he’d mentioned it was right before the international break began. They’d been in the dressing room at Hotspur Way and Dele, Jan, and Serge were hashing out a game of Uno in the middle of the room. Eric was at the benches, fiddling with his shoelaces on his trainers but glancing up at the game every time Dele cheered or jumped up excitedly. Jan had asked out loud what Eric’s plans were for after the England game, and Eric had calmly replied that he was going to see his family in Portugal. Dele had looked up from his cards and stared at Eric, as if he was hearing this information for the first time. He’d held Eric’s gaze for a few seconds, and then he’d sighed and looked away. Nothing more was said about it.

Later that night, Eric had brought it up for the third time. 

“You know you will have to go home right, when I’m in Portugal?”

Dele had shrugged again, said he’d made plans with his brother anyway and might even go to Ibiza for a few nights with the boys. He’d rushed his words, almost stumbling on them. When Eric had opened his mouth to reply, Dele had stabbed a button on the remote to turn Eric’s TV louder. 

So Eric doesn’t mention it again until the day he’s due to fly.

He’s in the kitchen, pouring cereal into a bowl and fighting to keep himself awake because it’s 6am and the dogs are up and active. Clay clambers around Eric’s feet, pining for attention even though Eric only opened his eyes maybe three or four seconds ago.

Eric yawns widely, runs his fingers through his hair, and almost has a heart attack when a pair of arms suddenly wrap around his middle. 

“Fuck-” Eric yelps, jumping out of his skin. He catches his breath and turns into Dele’s hold. “Fuck, you scared the life out of me, Del.” 

Dele nuzzles his face against Eric’s neck and makes a low whine in his throat. “Can’t sleep when you leave,” he says. Even though Eric knows that’s  _ definitely _ a lie. There have been countless times when Eric has gotten up early and Dele hasn’t stirred until midday.

Eric thinks about saying this out loud, but his brain pauses on the word ‘countless’, and for some reason he can’t bring himself to say anything at all, just lets Dele keep nuzzling against him, enjoying the warmth that he’s brought down with him from the bed. 

_ Their bed.  _

_ Countless times.  _

“You want some cereal?” Eric asks, planting a kiss in Dele’s hair. Dele tightens his grip around Eric’s waist and shakes his head against Eric’s neck. He mumbles something that Eric takes to be ‘no thanks’.

_ How many times now? _

Dele continues to cling to him, and Eric strokes his back idly for a few minutes in the low-lit kitchen, letting his cereal gradually go soggy in the bowl behind him. He inhales the smell of Dele’s coconut shampoo and glances at the clock. 6:12am. The seconds tick by quietly, reminding Eric that time is, in fact, passing. That every soft tick marks another second spent with Dele, doing  _ this.  _ Another night spent curled around each other, legs and duvet tangled, hands splayed on each other’s chests. Another morning waking up to Dele’s muffled snores. 

_ How many of these mornings have we had now? _

Eric tries to do the math, but it’s hard to quantify. And he doesn’t exactly know what he’s measuring. The nights spent in the same bed?  _ Probably around forty.  _ The times they’ve kissed?  _ Thousands now, surely.  _ The amount of times Dele has said I love you?  _ Fifteen. But maybe only two of them were serious.  _

Or maybe he’s trying to work out how many days he’s waited to be able to count these things.  _ Too many.  _

And yet, despite the fact the seconds keep ticking by and the nights keep adding up, it still amounts to almost nothing at all. A secret. Kisses hidden in the darkness of what they now call  _ their  _ bedroom, cuddles protected by the early hours of the morning when they can convince themselves they’re the only people in the whole world awake right now, the lacing of their fingers shielded away beneath tables and behind counters when no one is looking. The one time, the three times, the fourteen times now that they’ve slept together. Moans muffled in pillows to protect the neighbors. Quiet mutterings of a relationship folded into easier words:  _ us, this. _

Seconds tick by, and Dele has been silent for five, maybe six minutes now. Eric starts to wonder if he’s actually fallen back to sleep on him, so he shuffles slightly, checking to see if Dele can still hold himself up. 

Dele whines again and tugs on the back of Eric’s pyjama t-shirt. He keeps his head firmly in the crook of Eric’s neck and purrs until Eric strokes his back again. 

“I’m going to Portugal today,” Eric says, his voice hoarse with tiredness and a lack of coffee. “I have to leave in an hour.”

Dele still doesn’t say anything. Instead, he slips his hand beneath Eric’s shirt and rests his palm against Eric’s lower back. The touch is warm and comforting. Familiar. Dele’s hands on Eric’s body has become familiar, now. 

“Del?”

“Hmm?” 

“Did you hear what I said?” Eric sighs. 

It takes a few more seconds, but eventually Dele nods against him. “Yeah,” he croaks out. 

“Are you going to go home?” Eric asks. He trails his fingers up and down Dele’s spine in the way he knows Dele finds soothing, but instead of Dele melting further into him like he usually does, he pulls away sharply and runs his hands through his hair. The look on his face makes Eric’s stomach sink. 

“Yeah,” He says again. His tone is harsh and abrupt. The warm, soft, sleepy Dele has gone, replaced by someone cold and distant. Someone Eric is scared to admit he sees more often than he’d like lately. “Yeah, sure, fine.” 

Somehow, this doesn’t feel fine. 

Eric watches Dele move around the kitchen, rushing to round up all of the things that belong to him. His wallet that’s been left on the kitchen table for a week now, the hoodie slung over the back of the chair, his personal nutrition plan that’s pinned against Eric’s fridge with a Spurs magnet. He yanks it from the fridge and stuffs it in the pocket of his pyjama bottoms. The hurt is written all over his face.

Eric reaches out and grab’s Dele’s wrist as Dele makes to leave the room. He wants to pull Dele against his chest and hold him, he wants to reassure him that he didn’t mean it like that, that Dele doesn’t have to dramatically pack up and leave. He wants to breathe the words that he knows Dele wants to hear -  _ It’s just Portugal, it won’t be for long, things will be the same when I get back. _

But it doesn’t go to plan. Dele snatches his wrist out of Eric’s grasp and walks out of the room without a second glance, leaving Eric reaching out for him, confused and wounded. 

He follows Dele out of the kitchen in time to see Dele already at the bottom of the stairs, arms clutching his possessions to his stomach. He gets halfway up when Eric calls out to him. 

“Why do you do this?” He asks bitterly, exasperated because here they are again _.  _ Unable to communicate. Unable to put words to what they’re thinking or feeling or expecting of each other. Unable to move this forward. Just… stuck. Hiding their kisses in the darkness. Hiding their warm, sleepy hugs in the early hours of the morning, hiding their hands under tables and behind closed doors. Hiding their desperate need for this to be something behind sentences like  _ no it’s fine, Del, we can keep this casual.  _

Or maybe that last bit is just Eric. The thought barrels through his brain uninvited. It’s raw and sharp and painful.  _ He’s ashamed of me, and I hate him for it. I hate that he doesn’t want this to go anywhere. I hate that he takes it out of me. I hate that he won’t just admit this doesn’t mean as much to him as it does to me.  _

Dele pauses halfway up the stairs and Eric sees him grip the handrail, his fingers curling around it and squeezing. He snaps his gaze to Eric and his jaw tightens in frustration. Eric wants to shout at him, knows that Dele might be about to do the same. His words are already stampeding up in his throat. Harsh words that he’ll regret later:  _ childish, selfish, immature.  _ Big words that might scare Dele off completely:  _ commitment, relationship, boyfriend.  _

But the only words that seem safe enough to utter are, “What do you actually want?” 

He doesn’t mean to say is as cruelly as he does. 

Dele’s face breaks. His shoulders drop and he lets go of the railing, eyes glazed over and unfocused. He shrugs, laughing despite himself. “Doesn’t matter what I want.” 

He takes a few more of the steps and Eric feels the frustration clutching at his chest, threatening to boil over. He rushes to the bottom of the stairs and looks up. He bites the inside of his cheek and considers if this is the right thing to do, to lash out like this. Dele turns to look down at him from the top step.  

“Grow up!” Eric shouts suddenly. He can’t stop the angry words spilling out of him. “Learn to communicate, Dele. I’ve been telling you for weeks now that I’m going to Portugal. You just fucking… you just fucking shrug it off. Like everything. Like you don’t care because you  _ don’t  _ care. About this, us. You won’t even fucking say it, that we’re together, dating, whatever the fuck you want to call it or not call it. You just keep saying  _ yeah, yeah Eric it’s fine, it’s cool, it’s casual, whatever.  _ I don’t fucking want it to be-”

“How can you be so fucking stupid!?” Dele hurls back. He throws his hoodie and wallet down onto the top of the stairs and runs his hands through his hair, exhaling short, angry breaths. “If you actually think that I don’t want- that I don’t- then  _ fuck,  _ Eric. Then you don’t fucking know me at all!” Dele’s voice breaks at the end of his sentence. His hands are shaking and he can’t bring himself to look at Eric, so instead he sits down on the top step and buries his face in his hands.

Without registering his movements, Eric begins to climb the steps to get to him. He gets two, three, then four steps closer, but Dele suddenly lifts his face out of his hands and shakes his head. Eric stops on the fourth step. 

“I love you,” Eric says. It comes out a little choked and unsteady, but he means it. He really fucking means it. He doesn’t care if Dele doesn’t feel the same way. He can’t lose him, not like this. He needs Dele to know that the other stuff doesn’t matter as much as this matters. “I love you,” he says it again, his voice tilting because Dele is still shaking his head. The seconds keep ticking by. Time keeps passing and still Dele isn’t replying. Eric grips the handrail and ignores the pounding of his terrified heart. “Tell me you love me too.” 

“Eric…” 

Eric takes another step up. He’s only six steps away now. He needs to hear it. “Dele. Tell me you love me too.” 

“I can’t do this.”

Eric stops. Something inside him shatters and there’s a painful ringing in his ears, but around him the world is still silent. It seems unfair, that Dele could utter such a thing and the world stay quiet. That only he should feel this earthquake rattle his bones. 

He finds the strength to haul himself up another step. Towards a boy who doesn’t want this, who  _ can’t do this.  _ But who Eric keeps fighting to get to regardless, because without Dele, who the hell is Eric?

“We don’t want the same things,” Dele continues. He’s on the verge of tears but he uses the back of his hand to wipe them away before they fall. He takes a few shaky breaths and Eric climbs another step. 

“We can’t-” Dele begins. 

“And everyone-” 

“It’s just- it’s fucking stupid Eric, all of this-”

“I hate feeling like this.” 

Eric stops with three steps left between them. He could reach out and touch Dele if he wanted to, but he doesn’t, because Dele can’t do this, doesn’t want the same things. It’s three steps but it feels like they’re universes apart. Dele is still scrambling for the right words and Eric is trying not crumble at the thought that this is all about to be over. That they never did it. That they failed. And miserably, at that. 

“You don’t want to do this?” Eric asks. He leans against the wall and closes his eyes against the ache in his heart. The seconds tick by as he waits for his answer. Every gentle strike of the kitchen clock marks another second that Dele doesn’t want this, perhaps never wanted this. 

“It’s not that I don’t... it’s just... it’s that I don’t think you want what I want,” Dele mumbles.

Eric nods and keeps his eyes closed. He doesn’t want to look at Dele’s tormented expression, doesn’t want to see the pity in his eyes when he realises Eric got too deep. 

“You want me to go home. You want me to go home and wait for you to get back and-” 

“And you don’t want to wait for me,” Eric finishes. 

“No,” Dele admits. “I want to go  _ with  _ you. I don’t want you to send me home because I thought this was home.” 

Eric opens his eyes and turns to look at Dele. His head is swimming, full of incoherent thoughts and emotions fighting for attention, but he blocks it all out, waits for Dele to explain himself better.

“I know it’s your house and everything but…” Dele gestures around himself, to the house. He shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess I thought I  _ was  _ home. And you walk on eggshells around me, like you’re afraid that if you talk about it too long then you know I’ll ask if I can come with you. It fucking hurts. You say I don’t know how to communicate but you don’t let me. You don’t… you don’t let me tell you what I want.”

Eric tries to navigate the explanation. The ringing in his head all but deafens him, and all he can think about are the words he thought Dele would want to hear.  _ It’s just Portugal, it won’t be for long, things will be the same when I get back. _

It hits him all at once. That Dele doesn’t want to hear any of those things because it isn’t  _ just  _ Portugal, it’s Eric’s friends and family and a huge part of his life. And it doesn’t matter how long he’s away for, it just matters that Eric never invited Dele to go with him. And the worst of it all:  _ things will be the same when I get back.  _ They’re stuck, and the last thing they need is for things to be the same when Eric gets back. 

Eric leans forward and erases the space of the last two steps. He rests his forehead on Dele’s knee and closes his eyes, wondering how he’s going to make any of this right again. Dele is right - Eric  _ has  _ been fucking stupid. 

“I love you,” Eric says against the skin on Dele’s knee. He doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry.” 

“I love you too,” Dele whispers. Eric feels a tentative hand in his hair and leans into the touch. “But this isn’t about Portugal, is it? This whole argument. It’s about us.” 

_ Us, them.  _ Easier, gentle words than the ones that burn in Eric’s brain when he’s trying to sleep at night. The words that he almost he lets slip when he wakes in the morning and opens his eyes to find Dele sharing his pillow, sharing his space. His life. 

_ Boyfriend.  _

“I want you to be my boyfriend,” Eric mumbles. He doesn’t know if Dele hears him or not until Dele slides himself down the steps and settles on the same one as Eric. He holds Eric’s face in his hands and forces Eric to look at him.

“Then stop sending me away,” Dele says, laughing a little even though the pain is evident in his voice. “Let me stay.” 

“You can stay.” Eric nods and lets himself collapse into Dele’s arms. But then he remembers he has to leave in half an hour and he shakes his head. “No, no. Come with me. Come to Portugal.” 

“Everyone will know…” 

“I know,” Eric says. “We can tell them together.” 

“Tell them what?” Dele asks carefully. He chews on his bottom lip while Eric shrugs and smiles.

“Whatever, whatever you want to call it. Us.” 

“Ask me, then,” Dele says. His curls his mouth into a nervous smile when Eric looks at him in confusion. “I can’t be your boyfriend if you don’t ask me, Eric. You need to learn to communicate.”

The ringing stops. The ticking of the clock stops. The world is still quiet, except now Eric can hear the birds singing outside. 

“Will you be my boyfriend?” He asks dumbly. He feels sixteen again, and it makes him blush to even say the words. 

“Yeah,” Dele grins. He presses his forehead against Eric’s and inhales slowly. “Yes, I’ll be your boyfriend.” 

“Okay,” Eric replies. “Good.” He laughs, smiles. The ache in his chest softens. “How quickly can you pack a bag?” 

Dele uses his fingers to tilt Eric’s head up towards him. He grins, wide and happy and content, and then he kisses Eric on the mouth once, twice, three times. Another collection of gentle kisses to add to the tally before he scarpers upstairs to stuff the rest of his belongings in a bag. 

Eric sits on the step and looks down at his hands. He can count on his fingers the amount of times they’ve had these arguments, these miscommunications. What they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what they’re expecting of each other. Sometimes they get it wrong. But Eric figures that maybe this comes with the territory of being in a relationship. 

The seconds tick by, an unwritten record of the good times and the bad. The thousand kisses to the three arguments. The sleepy cuddles in the kitchen at 6am and the heated, passionate exploration of each other’s bodies under the duvet at midnight - and every second in between. An entire log of them, Eric and Dele. A relationship, a commitment. The big scary words that they’ve finally let into their home. 

_ Their  _ home.


	4. The Beach

Dele knows this should be a peaceful getaway, and for the most part, it is. They land in Portugal late on the Thursday evening and Eric’s mum comes to pick them up from the airport. She’s short and slim and fierce, with neat, shoulder-length brown hair and the famous Dier blue eyes. But she’s also got this warm, infectious smile that she bestows upon Eric and Dele the moment they step out of arrivals together, clad in matching tracksuits and trailing suitcases sluggishly behind them. 

Dele hates flying on public planes and had begged Eric to take a private jet instead, but Eric had shut down the proposition immediately, saying it was bad for the environment and the rainforests or something. So here they are, in arrivals at Lisbon International, tired and achy and hungry. Dele wants to moan a bit about how bad business class is, but then Eric sees his mum across the arrivals hall, and he immediately begins waving to her with this big, dopey grin on his face. Just like that, Dele suddenly doesn’t care whatsoever about the shortcomings of business class.  _ This  _ is why they came. 

Within seconds, Eric’s mum is clutching her son’s shoulders and reaching up to kiss his face excitedly like he’s seven years old, making smacking noises with her lips as she peppers him with motherly affection. She starts babbling away in Portuguese and brushes down his tracksuit, tugging at the soft grey material to straighten it out. It’s a scene that Dele can’t help but smile at, especially when Eric blushes and ducks his head.  _ Such a mummy’s boy,  _ Dele thinks with a slight smirk. He makes a mental note to tease him about that later. 

They talk a little more in Portuguese while Dele smiles politely, standing a little awkwardly on the spot because he doesn’t have a clue what either of them are saying, but then suddenly Louise turns to Dele and starts smoothing out his jacket as if Dele is just another of her children. As if they’ve met a hundred times before. As if it’s completely normal for her to be sighing and straightening his collar like this.  

“It’s nice to finally meet you!” She says, still neatening Dele’s clothes for him while he stares at her dumbly. His brain has only just registered that she’s speaking English when she suddenly glances at her watch and gasps. “It’s late! You must be hungry. Come with me. We will get you fed.” She’s still talking to Dele, still fiddling with his collar. The only reply his brain supplies him with is  _ yes, mum,  _ but he knows it would definitely be too weird to say that. So he just nods because he doesn’t know what else to do. And anyway, she’s right - he is  _ ravenous _ .

The small town where Eric’s family live is a quiet, forty-five minute drive away from the airport. Dele sits in the back seat of Louise’s car and watches the stars blur in the night sky while Eric sits in the front with his mum and finds his Portuguese tongue again. For the first few minutes, Dele feels like he needs to try and follow the conversation, especially when he hears his name sprinkled in to a few of Eric’s replies, but then he gets tired and loses focus. Listening to Eric speak Portuguese fills him with subdued happiness, makes his body feel warm and safe and sleepy. The soft syllables roll off Eric’s tongue like they were always meant to be there, and Dele wishes more than anything he could make sense of them. But he can’t, because there are just so many words that Dele doesn’t know yet. Right now, they’re just sounds that bracket Dele’s name. A melody that Dele doesn’t understand, but which he loves listening to regardless. 

As he leans his head against the cool glass of the window and feels his eyes go heavy, he thinks about how there might even be more Portuguese words than stars in the sky. He wonders if Portugal and England have the same stars, and then he laughs at himself under his breath for thinking something so stupid. He makes another mental note to tell Eric about that later, how he thought Portugal was in like a different universe or something. It almost  _ feels  _ like a different universe. They’re with Eric’s family and Eric is speaking Portuguese and Dele is Eric’s boyfriend. It’s not just in Dele’s head anymore. It’s not a secret anymore. It’s not tucked away under quiet murmurings of a possible future together. It’s real.  _ It’s real. _

Dele’s head falls forward against the glass and he suddenly jolts awake, inhaling sharply. The car is warm and comfortable and smells nice, which only leads to him falling asleep quicker than he can wake himself up. He can’t keep his eyes open, can’t keep his brain focused on one thought at a time. All he can register is the heat inside the car and the distant sound of Eric’s voice. His head rocks against the window again and images of Eric’s staircase flash in front of his eyes. 

It’s been nine hours since Eric asked him, since Dele grinned against Eric’s mouth and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him. The moment when his heart soared in his chest because  _ finally,  _ finally they were getting somewhere. He’d ran upstairs to pack and Eric had followed him into the bedroom. They’d made out for minutes or maybe hours. Lazy kisses in bed, fingers ghosting over each other’s lips, a million stars swimming in Eric’s ocean blue eyes-

“Del,” Eric’s voice rings throughout the bedroom. It’s loud. It doesn’t fit here. It’s not the same Eric that’s lying in bed with him tracing the outline of his jaw. “Del, wake up.” 

Dele opens his eyes and jerks upright. Eric eases the car door open and the warm night air rushes in, hitting Dele with the smell of sea salt.

“We’re here.” 

“I was dreaming,” Dele mumbles, more to himself than Eric. “You asked me-” He stops, blinking. He can’t remember what was memory and what was the dream.  

“I asked you what?” Eric implores. He leans inside the car to unfasten Dele’s seatbelt for him, even though Dele is more than capable of doing it himself. He sits back and lets Eric do it for him, though.

“To be your boyfriend,” Dele finishes quietly. Behind him, Louise is pulling suitcases out of the boot. They’ve parked up on some long driveway in front of a softly-lit villa. In the distance, Dele can hear the sound of the ocean crashing across the beach.

Eric takes Dele’s hand and helps him out of the back of the car. “That wasn’t a dream, Del,” he laughs as he closes the car door. He keeps his voice low enough that his mum won’t overhear. She doesn’t know yet. Nobody knows yet. 

“It wasn’t a dream?” Dele repeats back to him. He wants to keep hold of Eric’s hand but he knows he can’t. He looks down at their fingers tangled together. “Did we go to bed after?” 

“No, we went to the airport. We’re in Portugal, Dele.” 

“Do you have more stars here than in England?” 

Eric stops short and fixes Dele with a confused, somewhat concerned look. Dele opens his mouth to explain. He forgot to explain. But he doesn’t get the chance because Louise appears in front of them and Eric has to drop Dele’s hand before she sees. Dele curls his fingers into his palm and digs his nails into the flesh. A familiar ache settles in his chest, right behind his heart. It’s the same ache he used to get whenever someone walked into the dressing room and Eric would take a few steps away from him, or whenever Eric called his sister from Dele’s bed and started with ‘no, no, I’m not with anyone, I’m just at home’, or whenever Eric reminded him to clear his WhatsApp chats, just in case.  

“Welcome to the family. Ready to meet everyone?” Louise asks Dele. She nods towards the villa and sets off up the driveway, her white dress billowing softly behind her. 

Eric glances sideways at Dele and places his hand on the small of his back. “I’m with you,” he says. 

Dele smiles back at him and nods, unclenching his hand. 

\--

Dele isn’t normally one to be socially awkward, but he can’t pretend he isn’t a little nervous about meeting Eric’s extended family for the first time. Despite being almost 11pm, it seems like everyone who has ever been remotely connected to a Dier is waiting for them inside the villa. There are aunties and uncles and grandparents, nieces and nephews, cousins and second cousins, friends of the family, neighbours, the guy who brings them fresh bread in the mornings. Everyone wants to see Eric, to hug him and ask how he’s been and how the football season is going.

At least, that’s what Dele  _ assumes  _ they’re asking about, because they’re all speaking Portuguese and the only word Dele can pick up on is  _ futebol. _

He refuses to leave Eric’s side the entire time. If Eric so much as slips away even a meter, Dele is sliding back over to him, nudging him, reminding Eric of his promise. 

“Stay with me,” Dele mutters almost frantically when Eric’s elderly aunt comes up to greet them both in the modern, dimly-lit kitchen. Dele leans his back against the counter and taps the side of Eric’s thigh when she approaches. There are at least seven other people in the room, all talking quietly amongst themselves, but nobody comes to Dele’s rescue when this elderly woman walks up to him and starts talking  _ very  _ loudly at him in Portuguese. 

Dele taps Eric’s thigh with more urgency and Eric cuts off his conversation with his brother, turning instead to Dele and the little old lady with dark brown hair and, yeah, you guessed it, the Dier blue eyes. 

She doesn’t speak a word of English so Eric has to translate what she’s saying back to Dele. 

_ She’s asked how you know me.  _

_ She said you haven’t dressed very appropriately for the weather. _

_ She wants to know where you’re from. _

_ She wants to know if you have a girlfriend. _

Dele keeps his mouth shut and smiles at her through gritted teeth, nodding in the places where she pauses. He has absolutely no clue what she’s saying and Eric has stopped translating. Her vowels come out harsher as the conversation continues, and Dele can’t help but notice Eric almost cowering away from her. It fills him with hurt and anger, but Eric did warn him this would happen. Judgemental family members, different generations, a shift in culture. They’d talked about this on the plane on the way here, when they were trapped in business glass, and Dele had promised he’d try not to take any of it too personally.  

“Por que ele está aqui com você?” Eric’s aunt says. “Quem é ele?”

Dele wants to tug Eric’s hand and ask him what she’s saying. He keeps looking at the side of Eric’s face, waiting, but Eric is lost in conversation. 

“Ele é meu melhor amigo,” Eric replies easily. He turns and smiles at Dele, makes a show of putting his arm around Dele’s shoulders and squeezing them for a second. It’s brief, and forced, and Dele doesn’t like it one bit.  

Amigo. He knows that word. It means friend, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make the ache in his heart burn just a little harder.  _ Melhor.  _ Dele racks his brain for the little Portuguese that Eric has taught him over the years. It must mean ‘just’. Just friends.  _ It’s the first night,  _ Dele reminds himself,  _ give him time to tell them.  _

Finally, the conversation wraps up. The small, elderly lady hugs Eric around his middle and then pats Dele’s chest cautiously. Eric glances at Dele apologetically as she walks away.

“What was she saying?” Dele asks when she’s half way across the room and nobody else has come to bother them yet. “What did you tell her?” 

“I said I met you playing football,” Eric answers. He’s watching his cousins play with the dog by the patio doors and won’t meet Dele’s gaze. 

Dele digs him in the ribs to get his undivided attention. “About the girlfriend thing, you moron.” 

“People here understand English, Dele,” Eric mumbles under his breath. Dele can’t tell if he’s annoyed or not. It fills him with fear and dread and he desperately wants Eric to hug him right now and tell him he’s not angry and that everything is fine. This is the worst possible place for Eric to be angry at him.  

“So I shouldn’t even say the word girlfriend?” Dele asks. He can’t help it. His voice breaks and he can feel his vocal chords straining under the weight of the realisation - Eric doesn’t want him anywhere near the topic of relationships when his family are around. This is horrible and humiliating and Dele doesn’t understand anyone. He looks like an idiot. He spilled some Dr Pepper on his jacket earlier and it’s still there, making him look even more dumb and stupid.  _ She wants to know where you’re from.  _ He  _ hates  _ that question. He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired that he could break down and cry right now. 

Just as he’s about to let the emotions bubble up inside of him, Eric rolls his eyes and inches a little closer to him, brushing his finger against Dele’s as a gesture of reassurance. 

“I meant maybe you shouldn’t call me a moron in front of my extended family.”

“Did you say I’m just a friend?” Dele rushes. He can’t quite keep his voice steady and he snatches his finger away from Eric’s touch. “Is that what melhor amigo means? Just friends?” 

Eric studies him for a moment before his expression softens. He reaches out, curls his little finger around Dele’s. They both stare down at their linked hands as Dele deflates.

“It means best friend. And tomorrow I’ll tell them  _ meu namorado _ , which means boyfriend.” 

Dele could still cry. Not because he’s worried Eric is mad at him, but because he loves Eric so much that it’s physically hurting him. He’s in Portugal, he’s surrounded by Eric’s family, and this is exactly what they talked about: dealing with the good  _ and  _ the bad. The wonderful caring mother who already dotes on Dele, and the judgemental elderly aunt who wants to know why Dele doesn’t have a girlfriend. They’ll take each day as it comes, and they’ll do it together.

“It’s been a long day,” Eric says gently. He squeezes Dele’s hand and Dele squeezes back. “Let’s go to bed.”

\--

They don’t find the chance to tell anyone on the second day because they’re rushed off their feet seeing 5,000 different friends and family members. 

They have breakfast with Eric’s mum and dad, then brunch with Eric’s sister and her fiance, then  _ second _ brunch with Eric’s identical twin cousins. Then there’s the family bike ride through the neighbouring barley fields, the intense game of water polo at the villa, and the early afternoon poker games around the pool with Eric’s older brothers. 

At 4pm, when there isn’t a cloud in the sky and it’s nearing 35 degrees, Eric promptly falls asleep on a lounger by the pool, his sunglasses slipping down his face and landing askew on his nose. He snores loudly until Dele sticks his leg out from his own lounger and kicks him in the thigh. Eric jerks in his sleep but still doesn’t wake up. 

To avoid being pulled into another game of water polo that he really doesn’t have the energy for, Dele has to busy himself with his phone and with a book that he’s found beneath Eric’s lounger. He pretends to read it for a whole six minutes before he realises it’s all written in Portuguese. So he gives up with the book and scrolls through Instagram instead, occasionally glancing to his left to check on the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, sleeping,  _ snoring  _ bulk of a boyfriend that he’s become quite fond of.

About an hour later, Eric  _ finally  _ arises from his afternoon siesta. They peel their warm, sun-soaked bodies from their loungers and pad back inside the villa where Eric’s mum is cheerfully beginning preparations for dinner. Eric kisses her on the cheek as he walks by and tells her they’ll be back down in an hour for dinner. He tells her that if she needs any help, she should just call up to him and he’ll send Dele down. 

Dele’s guest room continues to lie untouched. Eric had brought Dele’s things straight into his own room and from that moment on, Dele figured there was no point pretending the guest room was ever going to be used. He showers in Eric’s bathroom and lets the cold water spray down across his back and shoulders, cooling his already sunburned skin. It’s only when Eric walks in _without knocking_ and proceeds to take a leak _without_ _asking_ that Dele finds the motivation to get out of the shower and put some clothes on. 

Of course, Eric has other ideas. 

What begins as soft kisses across the threshold of the bathroom quickly turns into a heated make out session on Eric’s bed. It feels a little unfair that Eric is fully clothed when Dele is being made to roll around on the bed in nothing but a white towel, especially when Eric quickly snatches it away from him and discards it. Still, Dele can’t really complain. Not when he gets a blowjob out of it. 

Dinner takes place down in the gardens, just as the sun is beginning to set over the backdrop of the dusky Portuguese hills. There are twenty or so of them, all friends and family, all squashed around a table together, talking over one another in Portuguese and in English and in French. Dele’s pulled this way and that, expected to participate in one, two, and then three conversations all at once. Eric sits next to him and laces his fingers with Dele’s under the table. Every now and then, he strokes the pad of his thumb across Dele’s finger, reminding him of his promise:  _ I’m with you.  _

The Diers make drinking look easy. Between twenty of them, and across three hours, they somehow consume fourteen bottles of white wine and four bottles of red. Laughter bubbles loudly from the garden, piercing the warm night air. There’s the clinking of glasses, the barking of the dogs as they play with each other, and the sound of twenty different conversations all happening at once, some in Portuguese, some in English. All of them loud and happy and tipsy. 

By the time they finally collapse into Eric’s bed together at 1am, neither of them are too upset that they haven’t managed to find time to tell the family yet. Eric presses a sleepy kiss to Dele’s temple and says they’ll definitely tell them tomorrow. Dele just smiles against the skin on Eric’s shoulder and lets himself roll further into Eric’s arms. It’s too hot to sleep cuddled up together, even with the balcony doors wide open, but Dele at least wants five minutes of Eric slowly stroking his back. 

“I had a nice day,” Dele mumbles against Eric’s bare shoulder. Eric brings his hand up to Dele’s hair and combs his fingers through it, letting his fingertips scratch soothingly against Dele’s scalp. 

“Me too,” he whispers. “We’re going to the beach tomorrow. Let’s tell them then.” 

“Tell them?” Dele says. He knows what Eric means, but his brain is half asleep and his eyes are slipping shut and he worries for just a second that maybe Eric means something else. Maybe he means telling them about his new car or his change in agent back in England. 

“Tell them about you, about us,” Eric answers. He’s falling asleep too. His voice is distant and his hand on Dele’s back stills in between Dele’s shoulder blades. He inhales deeply through his nose, makes a low noise in his throat, and then shuffles into a more comfortable position with Dele’s head still on his chest. “Me and you,” he mumbles into the darkness. Dele’s almost gone. He doesn’t have the energy to say anything back. “Tell them…” Dele lets his hand go slack on Eric’s stomach. Eric’s chest rises and falls in a slow rhythm beneath him. “Tell them… love you.” 

_ I love you.  _

Dele says it in his head because his body has betrayed him, succumb to the lull of sleep just a little too soon. He can still hear Eric’s mumbles but they’re fading further away with every passing second. Everything is going dark and quiet and still. They agreed it was too hot to sleep like this, but here they are. Limbs intertwined, knees pressed together, Dele’s head heavy on Eric’s chest. They agreed, right from the start, right from the first time they drunkenly kissed at Jan’s New Year’s Eve house party, they agreed they’d stay apart. It was for the best. Too hot, too messy, too complicated.

But here they are. Limbs intertwined, knees pressed together, Dele’s head heavy on Eric’s chest. Both fast asleep and Dele’s mind already lost in dreams about water polo and sandy beaches. Even in his dreams he’s searching for Eric, reaching out for him, calling his name. 

\--

It’s supposed to be just seven of them going down to the beach on the Saturday, but Eric’s cousin Sara and her three kids decide to tag along at the last minute, and then word gets out to some friends down the road, and they’ve got nieces and nephews staying so they decide they’ll come too, and then Eric’s sister invites her friends and  _ their  _ kids. So by 11am, when everyone is  _ finally  _ ready and all the picnics have been packed, the convoy of Dier cars sets out towards the coast, with Dele and Eric tailing at the back. 

They’re in Eric’s beaten up open-top Jeep, which fills Dele with sheer embarrassment but seems to fill Eric with the level of confidence you should only ever get from driving a Ferrari. He’s grinning constantly from behind his sunglasses and he keeps fiddling with the radio, knee bobbing in time to the music. They’ve got some Portuguese pop station cranked up to maximum volume, so of course Eric is singing at the top of his lungs, and of course Dele is recording the whole thing for his Snapchat story. 

It’s a beautiful, sunny drive. They’ve got the sea breeze in their hair, they’ve got clear blue skies, and they’ve got plans to tell Eric’s family today. Well, Eric’s family  _ plus  _ the thirteen tag-alongs. 

Dele watches the countryside blur by with a happy, content smile on his face that’s been there all morning. He’s had this bubble of happiness inside of him ever since he woke up to Eric spooning him, nosing into his hair and pressing warm, sleepy kisses against the back of his neck. A low, croaky voice and more slow kisses. _Good_ _morning, Delboy._

And he was right. It  _ was  _ a good morning. 

“I can’t stop thinking about what you did with your tongue this morning,” Eric says smugly, one hand on the steering wheel and the other hanging outside the car. He opens his legs a little and Dele’s eyes are automatically drawn to the bulge inside the baby blue shorts. The same bulge he had his tongue wrapped around in Eric’s bed just a few hours ago. 

The memory of Eric’s muffled moans come racing back to him. The way Eric had dug his fingers into the back of Dele’s head, just beneath his skull. The way he’d all but fucked Dele’s mouth until he spasmed and came in Dele’s throat. 

A  _ very  _ good morning.

The convoy rocks up at the beach just before midday. While everyone is getting sorted with beach towels and cool boxes and sun cream, Eric and Dele grab their bags and race each other down to the waves.

The clear blue sky is matched only by the crystal blue waters. It’s a public beach, but only a handful of people have made the trip all the way out, considering it’s an hour drive from the nearest town. It means the Dier clan near enough have the place to themselves. 

Once everyone has set up camp, Eric walks Dele down the shoreline and tells him about when he used to come here as a boy. He spills out memories faster than Dele can retain them, and Dele has to keep interrupting, asking  _ who’s Oscar?  _ and  _ wait, what was your school called again?  _ because he doesn’t want to forget a single detail. He looks down at his feet as they walk, watches the way his toes sink into the wet sand, the way the shallow water pools around his feet. Eric is telling him about a school trip he took here once and Dele looks up at the horizon, pictures seven-year-old Eric on this very beach building sand castles by himself.

They walk up the warm, quiet coast line for twenty minutes, down to the more rugged part of the beach. Eric explains that most people don’t really walk this far up, but that he used to come here with his friends when they were teenagers. His friends would smoke weed and Eric would bring a football. 

Dele fixes him with a disbelieving look. “You didn’t smoke weed with them?” He asks curiously. 

Eric scuffs the toe of his shoe against some shells and picks one of them up, clearing off the wet sand. “No,” he laughs. He studies the shell. “No, I wanted to stay fit and healthy. I was obsessed with football, so.” 

“So they’d smoke weed and you would be here just doing kick ups?” 

Eric shrugs and smiles at him. “Yeah, pretty much.” He hands Dele the pale pink shell and Dele smiles gratefully. He slips the shell into the pocket of his shorts and they set off again further up the beach.

When they’re far enough out of sight, Eric reaches out and laces his fingers with Dele’s.

“Love you,” Eric mumbles, his voice low even though there’s no one else around. It’s a habit that Dele can’t wait for them both to break.  _ I want to be able to shout it,  _ he thinks.  _ I want to tell the whole world I love Eric Dier.  _

“Love you too,” Dele says. He smiles and squeezes Eric’s hand, but it doesn’t feel like enough. He loves Eric, and Eric will never know how much. He’ll never understand just  _ how much.  _ Because Dele’s dumb and he doesn’t know the words - in English  _ or  _ in Portuguese - to begin to explain to Eric how he makes him feel. 

“What’s wrong?” Eric asks with concern. Dele looks at him with confusion, but then he realises he’s stopped. He’s stopped in his tracks, still holding on to Eric’s hand. Their arms stretch between them like a fragile lifeline. The waves wash quietly around their ankles. 

Dele doesn’t bother trying to muster a speech about how much he loves Eric or how grateful he is about being invited here, about being let in to Eric’s home and his family and his life. He knows words just won’t do it justice, and he’s never been good with words anyway. So he steps forward and closes the distance between them instead. He uses both hands to grab the front of Eric’s white t-shirt, clinging to it. He brushes his lips across Eric’s mouth and smiles. 

“I bet I can beat you,” he says. He feels Eric frown against him and laughs into the kiss. “I bet I can beat you,” he says again. Eric pulls away, waiting for an explanation. 

Dele leans down and picks up a smooth rock, turning it in his fingers. He holds it up to Eric and nods at the expanse of ocean. “Skimming competition.” 

“Ooh, you’re on, Delboy,” Eric grins. He pulls Dele in by his collar and kisses him square on the mouth before turning on his heels, scouring the sand in search of his own rocks to throw. 

Dele stumbles backwards into the shallow water. He squints against the sun and holds his hand above his eyes to shield them from the light. He’s watching Eric pick up and assess a variety of different stones. The whole time he’s standing there waiting, his other hand traces his lips where the ghost of Eric’s kiss lingers.

\--

Dele’s half asleep on some random kid’s Ben 10 beach towel. They’re all back at the main spot now, with a rather elaborate picnic happening around them and kids screaming and someone’s speaker blaring out Portuguese pop tunes. It’s relentlessly hot but Dele’s in and out of sleep and the spray from the waves is keeping him cool. It really would be the perfect way to spend an afternoon if it wasn’t for the six-year-olds who keep running in circles around him, kicking sand up into his face. 

“Venha me pegar!” One of the young boys yells. His voice is shrill and he’s  _ far  _ too close to where Dele is trying to sleep. “Me persiga, me persiga!”

Dele groans, keeps his eyes closed, and turns his head to face the other way. He’s lying on his stomach, face down and resting on his arms. Eric’s next to him, somehow sleeping through all of this with no issue at all.  __

The kids scamper off down the beach and Dele is given a few more minutes of peace. He lets himself soak up the sun, lets his mind wander, lets his breathing become heavier. For a while he’s just toeing the line of consciousness, dipping in and out of sleep and only waking when there’s more sand kicked in his face, or someone’s tripping over his foot.  

“Onde Eric foi?” A woman’s voice shouts. Dele’s brain picks out Eric’s name and gives him a little shove, tells him to wake up for a minute. “É Charlie com o Eric?” The voice continues. She sounds inquisitive, but not totally alarmed.

_ He’s next to me,  _ Dele thinks. He knows she’s asking where Eric is and he doesn’t understand how she hasn’t seen him yet. She doesn’t sound more than maybe twenty meters away, and Eric isn’t exactly easy to miss.

“Daisy, onde is Eric?” 

Dele sighs and forces his body to wake up. He needs to shake Eric too, tell him to go tell this woman that he’s here and everything is fine. He opens his eyes, lowers his sunglasses, and heaves himself upright, feeling to his right to where he knows Eric is asleep next to him. 

Except he isn’t. 

When Dele reaches across, he’s just met with an empty beach towel. Dele stares at the space where Eric was lying like  _ two seconds ago.  _ Or was it two seconds? Maybe it was a few minutes ago, or longer. Maybe hours? Dele has no clue what time it is or how long he’s been asleep for. All he knows it that Eric was there, and now he isn’t. 

“Patrick, onde is Eric?”

Dele looks around the beach. He can’t see Eric anywhere. 

He stands up, brushing the sand from his swim shorts. He still can’t see Eric. 

No one knows where Eric is. 

_ Don’t panic. He’ll just be taking a piss somewhere or he’s gone back to the car to fetch something. He’s a giant grown adult. He hasn’t been kidnapped.  _

Dele walks calmly back to the car and reminds himself of all the reasons why it would be logistically impossible to kidnap Eric. He’s big and heavy and bulky, and he can fight. He’s  _ strong.  _ He’s fucking  _ loud.  _ He’d yell. He’d be impossible to squeeze into the boot of a car. It just wouldn’t make any sense at all to try and kidnap someone of his size. 

_ It’s fine. He’ll be at the car.  _

The car park is deserted, save for a few seagulls perched on the bonnet of Louise’s car. They watch curiously as Dele moves around all four sides of Eric’s Jeep, looking behind the seats, tapping on the boot -  _ just in case it’s practical joke _ .

Yeah, that must be it. Eric’s just playing games. He’s hiding from Dele so he can jump out and scare him and laugh at the face Dele makes. It’s just a big prank.

That’s what Dele tells himself when he walks back to the beach and sees the woman who was asking for Eric now sitting down on her beach towel, sipping calmly from a bottle of lemonade. She’s got her heart-shaped glasses perched on the end of her nose and she’s looking down at a some kid who Dele guesses must be Charlie. 

_ Well if Charlie has been found, then Eric has been, too.  _

Dele walks back over to his and Eric’s abandoned beach towels. Dele’s phone has been cast off to one side on the sand and he reaches down to pick it up, brushes the specks of sand from it. His only new message is from Harry Kane asking him how his holiday is going. 

He calls Eric and Eric’s phone vibrates where it’s been tucked away under his own beach towel.

Dele hangs up. With a deep breath, he walks over to where the rest of the women have gathered, fussing over Charlie and the numerous other children.

“Is Eric around?” He asks politely. He teeters on the edge of their group, hoping one of them will take pity on him and point him in the direction of his boyfriend. Nobody answers him. Nobody even hears him. He steps forward, says it again. “Does anyone know where Eric is?” 

One of the women, the short blonde one who Dele  _ thinks  _ is cousin Sara, she glances at Dele inquisitively and then looks back at her sisters. “Quem é?”

Dele is made to stand and watch as the women proceed to have a conversation around him in a language he doesn’t understand. He feels his throat constrict painfully as they laugh amongst themselves, throwing glances at each other and at Dele, babbling away in Portuguese. They don’t bother to hide the fact they’re clearly talking about him.

“Ele é amigo do Eric?”

“Ele é aquele com quem ele joga futebol?”

Sara shrugs and digs around in her beach bag for a Capri Sun. “Acho que sim. Ele está hospedado na casa deles.”

“Do any of you speak English?” Dele asks impatiently. He’s spent the whole day listening to Portuguese, even though Eric assured him they do all speak English. 

“A little,” Sara replies. She smiles at Dele and holds her hand in front of her eyes to block the sun. “Eric is around, I am sure.” 

“Do you know where?” Dele presses. He swallows around the lump in his throat and looks down at Charlie. He wants someone to just ask Charlie where Eric is.  _ Why is no one asking Charlie? _

Charlie’s mum shrugs. “Talvez ele tenha ido passear?” 

Dele inhales sharply through his nose tries to ignore the frustration building inside of him. He fixes his gaze on Charlie. “Do you know where Eric is?” He asks him. Charlie shakes his head and curls his arms around his mother’s waist, turning away from Dele with a frown. 

Sara walks over to Dele and hovers by his side for a second. She presses her mouth into a thin, sympathetic line and lets her hand come to rest on Dele’s shoulder. “Ele não vai estar longe, ele vai ficar bem, talvez tenha saído para passear.”

_ I don’t understand you!  _ Dele screams internally.  _ Why are you doing this to me!? You know I don’t understand you!  _

Dele nods quickly and walks away, sets off up the beach. He tells himself it doesn’t matter that Eric’s family won’t help him, that they’re so openly mocking him for being worried. He tells himself he’ll just have to go and find Eric himself. 

The beach is still pretty deserted so Dele walks and walks and walks until he gets to where Eric took him earlier in the day, to the rugged part of the beach where Eric used to come with his friends and his football. He arrives at the clump of rocks on the shore and stands uselessly on the spot where Eric kissed him. He’s completely lost for what to do next.

There’s nothing and nobody around. Just the seagulls squawking loudly above him, circling him,  _ mocking him.  _ Probably talking in Portuguese about how stupid Dele looks right now. Lost in Portugal and alone, unable to understand what is being said to him, even though everyone is making a point of talking loudly and patronizingly slow. 

“Eric?” Dele calls out. He just wants Eric now, he wants Eric to come back  _ right now _ . He stumbles forward into the shallows, looks down the beach towards the horizon, out at the ocean, and then into the fields that lie behind the coastline.

“Eric?” He calls it again, louder this time. Panic rises in his tone and he becomes breathless. “ERIC!”

He runs behind the rocks, into the fields. He shoves his way through the tall grass and suddenly feels a stabbing pain in the sole of his foot. His knees buckle and he catches himself on his hands and knees against the ground. As he takes the pressure off his foot, he realises he’s stood on something sharp. Maybe a stick or something. Whatever it was, it’s cut his foot, and there’s blood, a  _ lot  _ of blood. He can’t stand on his foot because it hurts. He’s in the middle of some field and he’s hurt and lost and he just wants Eric so bad that he bursts into tears. 

The sobs spills out of him as he sits on the floor in the grass field, clutching his foot and whimpering Eric’s name. He knows, god he  _ knows  _ he’s overreacting right now and Eric will just have wandered off somewhere. He _ knows  _ Eric is fine and he’ll come back and they’ll tell his family about their relationship today, but right now, with his foot stinging and the blood seeping out of him and the tears rolling down his face, right now he feels like he just wants to go home. He misses the warm, comforting safety of Eric’s bed. He misses Eric’s dogs and his Colombian coffee and his voice-activated microwave. He misses the little ceramic bowl on Eric’s kitchen table that they both drop their car keys in to after getting home from training. 

He’s a crying, whimpering mess and he knows he needs to pull himself together.  _ It’s just a small cut, nothing life changing _ . He swallows back the rest of his panicked tears and takes a few deep breaths.

First things first, he needs to get out of his field. He hauls himself back onto his feet and slowly limps out the way he came, back on to the beach. 

The seagulls squawk above him, laughing. The waves break a little harsher against the shore. It’s maybe approaching 4pm now, and Dele somehow needs to hobble the 20 minute journey back to camp. The wind picks up and rustles through his hair, turns his cheeks rosy. It’s still hot. The tears dry to Dele’s cheeks and he stubbornly wipes them away with the back of his hand. 

_ What if Eric isn’t there when you get back?  _ Dele thinks to himself. The horrible thoughts come crashing into his brain like stormy waves, one after another, relentless and unbidden.  _ What if he’s genuinely lost, or hurt? What if he never comes back? What if you’re forced to leave Portugal and go home without him? What if you never see him again?  _

It’s the worst thirty minute hobble of his life. The pain has subsided, but it still hurts to put pressure on his foot because he keeps getting sand in the cut, even though he’s dipping in and out of the sea every few minutes to wash the wound.

Everything just feels bleak and miserable now. Earlier, he’d been enjoying the blazing sunshine, sleeping on the beach and occasionally getting up to play beach volleyball with Eric and his brothers. He and Eric had swam in the sea, they’d eaten peanut butter sandwiches, they’d laughed and grinned at each other and Eric had mouthed the words  _ I love you  _ at him. 

But now Eric is nowhere to be seen and Dele has hurt himself. He’s cried over a tiny wound which has only made him more frustrated, and on top of all of that, he’s now convinced Eric’s family don’t like him at all. They’ll never accept him. Maybe this whole trip was a mistake. Dele should have just gone home like Eric wanted him to. So, yeah, he’s feeling pretty miserable the whole walk back to camp. 

Everyone is packing up their things by the time Dele straightens himself up and attempts to walk over to his towel like nothing has happened. 

Eric’s towel is still abandoned, his phone still tucked away under the corner.

Dele stands on the spot and stares down at it. He can feel the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes but he wills himself not to cry, not here, not in front of Eric’s family.  _ Where the fuck are you? Why did you leave me?  _ Dele takes a few shaky breaths and looks around, but still nothing. Nobody even seems to care. 

Everyone is packing up to leave and Eric isn’t here and  _ nobody cares.  _ It’s enough to make Dele want to scream until his lungs burn out.

Sara folds up her towel slowly and deliberately. She looks at Dele and Dele looks right back at her. He knows she won’t help him, and he has this sickening feeling that she’s hiding something from him, that she knows  _ exactly  _ where Eric is but she’s quite enjoying seeing Dele unravel. She smirks and turns her back to him. 

Dele marches over to her. 

“Where is Eric? Did he come back?” Dele demands. He moves so that he’s in her line of sight. He forces her to look at him. 

“Sorry?” She says, feigning confusion. She puts on the same patronising voice and fake smile that she used earlier, except this time Dele has less patience for it. 

“Where is Eric? I haven’t seen him for an hour. Where is he? Where did he go?” 

“Tenho certeza que ele está bem,” Sara says, and Dele feels his patience reach boiling point. She doesn’t like him. No one likes him _. _ “Não fique tão preocupado com ele-” 

Sara is cut off when someone walks up behind them and interjects. 

“Stop speaking to him in Portuguese, Sara.” 

Dele turns frantically to see Eric standing next to him, a little breathless and windswept. He’s in his beach shorts still, sporting rosy cheeks and a stern, unimpressed expression that forces Sara to walk away with a huff.

Dele doesn’t mean to let the whimper escape him but it does. 

“Hey, Del,” Eric says softly. He opens his arms up and Dele folds himself against Eric’s chest and clings on to him. He has to bite down on his lower lip to stop it quivering again.

“Where-” Dele begins, but he’s too choked up to speak properly. He buries his face in to Eric’s neck and tries to compose himself. “Where did you go?” He eventually manages. 

“I went for a run,” Eric explains. He rubs Dele’s back soothingly and kisses the side of his head, just above Dele’s temple. “I told my mum to tell you. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“I thought-” Dele inhales sharply. His fingertips dig in to Eric’s shoulder blades. He thought the worst things,  _ stupid things,  _ but he doesn’t want to relive them and he doesn’t want to put that burden on Eric, so he stops himself before he can spill any more of his irrational worries out into the open. If only he’d asked a few more people before running off. If only he’d thought to speak to Eric’s mum, then none of this would have happened. 

“I ended up running further than I thought.” 

“I hurt my foot,” Dele says a little pathetically. Eric goes to pull away from him, probably to check out what’s happened, but Dele won’t let him and keeps a firm hold of him. “It’s okay, I just-” 

“What did you do? Was it from the sea?” Eric asks. 

“No,” Dele says. He leans his body against Erics, yearning for the familiar feeling of comfort and safety. “The fields. I lost you. I thought I lost you.” 

“What?” Eric stills his hand on Dele’s back. “What do you mean? What fields?” 

“By the rocks, where we walked to this morning. I went there. I was looking for you. I thought I’d lost you.” 

“Del-” 

“I thought I’d lost you,” Dele says again, and this time his voice breaks. “No one would help me. No one will speak English to me. They don’t like me, Eric, I want to go home. Can we go home?” 

“Hey, hey,” Eric curls his arms tighter around Dele’s shoulders. “You didn’t lose me, you’ll never lose me.” 

Dele shakes his head. His throat is too tight to speak. Eric keeps trying to move away from him and Dele won’t,  _ can’t  _ let go of him. “I lost you, you were gone. You were gone and no one would-  _ Eric,  _ no one would-”

Eric keeps his arm around Dele’s shoulder but turns away from him, turns to face Sara and Jules and all of the cousins and family friends whose names Dele hasn’t learned yet. “Hey!” He shouts at them, and they all stop their gossiping to see what Eric is shouting about. 

Dele’s breath catches in his throat when Eric pulls him forward and crashes his mouth against Dele’s. It’s a brief, tender kiss. One that almost makes Dele’s knees buckle again, because it’s their first  _ public  _ kiss. In front of actual people. In front of  _ Eric’s family.  _

Eric takes a deep breath and turns back to the crowd.

“He’s my boyfriend, and I love him, and you need to stop making him feel like he doesn’t belong here.” 

The whole beach falls silent. Even the seagulls stop squawking to listen to what Eric is going to say next. 

“I know some of you already know about this, and I know some of you suspected it, but yeah, it’s true. I’m dating Dele Alli. So stop gossiping and treat him like family, because he is, he’s family.”

Nobody talks. Sara stares at them both with her mouth hanging open while Jules glances around and shoots a look at her fiancé. It’s quiet, tense, awkward. Nobody wants to be the first to speak. 

That is, until Charlie steps forward. He’s six years old and scrappy, with dirty blonde hair and the famous Dier blue eyes. He’s got confusion painted all over his face and Dele mentally prepares himself for a barrage of awkward questions. He clings to Eric a little tighter when Charlie opens his mouth to speak. 

“You’re Dele Alli?” He asks in disbelief. 

Dele is so taken aback by the question that he doesn’t know what to say. He just nods slowly. 

“You’re cool,” Charlie concludes. He smiles, and then walks back over to Sara, who quickly ushers him back and starts mumbling to him in hushed Portuguese. 

Louise breaks out of the crowd. She’s the first to walk over and hug them. She makes a show of kissing both of Eric’s cheeks, and then doing the same to Dele. She clasps Dele’s hands and tells him,  _ you are family _ , with the same warm smile that she had when Dele first met her at the airport. 

She doesn’t look surprised by the news, so Dele suspects she might be one of those who already knew. At what point Eric started telling people, Dele doesn’t have a clue. He’d really thought that everything up until now had been kept tightly under wraps, but apparently not, because then Eric’s brothers come over too and they’re congratulating them a little too casually, making digs about Eric taking too long to come out. 

Dele smiles and hugs everyone who comes over. Eric gets swept up by his sisters who  _ demand  _ to know how long Eric has been dating his best friend, and Eric blushes and ducks his head and says,  _ well, it’s been a while.  _

And yeah, it has. 

Dele reaches out and touches Eric’s hand, pulling his attention away from his sisters for just a moment. He mouths the words  _ I love you,  _ but then realises he doesn’t have to do that anymore. 

“I love you,” he says out loud. Eric smiles at him, warm and bashful. 

Dele keeps thinking about Louise’s words and the way she looked at him in the airport.  _ You are family.  _ He remembers her words when they first arrived at the villa.  _ Welcome to the family.  _ She must have known all along. 

Eric turns back to the conversation he’s having with his sisters, but he keeps his little finger hooked around Dele’s. Their arms stretch out between them like an unbreakable lifeline. 

Behind them, the waves crash softly against the shore, each one rolling out across the sand before pulling back in.  _ Like us,  _ Dele thinks as he watches them longingly over his shoulder. His and Eric’s relationship feels a bit like the waves sometimes. Some days they’re stormy and hostile, and other days they’re gentle and soothing and playful. But every day they’re  _ there _ , through the good and the bad. Taking each day as it comes, as committed and as faithful as the sea.


	5. The Talk

_\--_

_The talk._

_\--_

 

The fifth time it happens, Dele doesn’t wasn’t to hear about it.

“I think you have separation anxiety,” Eric says one night when they’re curled up on the sofa watching Love Island.

Dele’s lying on top of him, hands lost up Eric’s t-shirt, head slack on Eric’s chest. Their legs are intertwined in a way that Eric doesn’t know where he stops and Dele begins. But most nights are like this now - lazy, warm, easy. The fire is crackling softly in the background, the dogs are asleep on the floor next to them. It’s a night just like any other.

“No I don’t,” Dele huffs. His eyes are glued to the TV but his hand twitches ever so slightly up Eric’s shirt. 

They lay quietly for a moment while the sound of Love Island fills the room. Someone is arguing with someone else about something they said earlier in the show, apparently. Eric hasn’t really been following it. He brings his hand to the nape of Dele’s neck and scratches idly. In his head, he’s mulling over the theory that has been niggling him for weeks now. 

Eric is 80% sure Dele has separation anxiety.

He trails his fingers across the back of Dele’s shoulders and smiles to himself when Dele leans into the touch.

Eric actually despises Love Island, for the record, but Dele enjoys it for reasons that Eric doesn’t even want to get into. It’s easy TV, and they’ve just had sex on the kitchen counter, so Eric isn’t feeling too hard done by for being made to watch another episode. It keeps Dele quiet, and on top of him, and _not_ on his phone for once. 

“I mean it,” Eric says, even though it’s been at least five minutes since either of them last spoke. Dele has clearly forgotten what they were even talking about because he lifts his head off of Eric’s chest and affords him a questioning glance. 

“Mean what?” He asks. His gaze falls down to Eric’s mouth and before Eric can speak, Dele leans up and kisses him. 

“What I said about-” Eric’s cut off by another kiss. 

He hums a laugh against Dele’s lips and tries to lean back a little, but he’s trapped between Dele and the sofa cushions. “About you having-” Another kiss. And another. Dele continues to assault his mouth whenever Eric tries to finish his sentence. 

 _Point proven,_ Eric thinks. _You don’t even want me to say it._

“Del-” Another kiss. 

“Dele-” Another one. 

“Hey, stop it,” Eric says firmly. He turns his head away so that Dele can’t attack his mouth anymore. 

Dele tuts and inches himself further up Eric’s body, inadvertently digging his knee into Eric’s balls as he does so. Eric has to wiggle himself out of the uncomfortable position but it only seems to annoy Dele even more.

“I think you have-” 

“You’re my fucking boyfriend, Eric, I’m allowed to kiss you,” Dele snaps. He rolls his eyes and makes a point of turning back to the TV, letting his head fall heavily onto Eric’s chest. “I thought that’s what you wanted,” he finishes under his breath.

“It is, don’t- don’t turn this around on me. I’m not saying I don’t want you to kiss me so I don’t know why you’re already getting defensive-”

“I’m not getting defensive,” Dele insists. Defensively.

Eric suddenly feels Dele’s fingers at his waist, feels them curl around the fabric of his t-shirt and clutch at it. It silences all of the arguments in Eric’s brain for a moment.

He hadn’t picked up on the behaviour until they got back from Portugal, but the more he thought about it, the more he realised Dele had been doing this all along. He just hadn’t noticed because Dele usually does it when they’re talking about something small and insignificant, like Eric needing to pop to the shops to get bread, or needing to take Clay to the vets after training. 

So for a while, it passed by unnoticed, until Eric started talking about Spurs and the season and his lack of minutes lately. That’s when Dele would suddenly close the gap between them and grab the hem of Eric’s shirt. That’s when he’d flood the room with compliments about Eric’s play style and how much Poch clearly likes him and how he was just being rested. Eric only had to raise an eyebrow an inch and mention how he was out of form again and Dele’s fingers would be scrambling for an item of Eric’s clothing to cling on to. Something to keep Eric close. _He’s just trying out new rotation tactics. You’re loved at Spurs. Everyone loves you, Diet. You can’t leave. You won’t leave, right?_

It was always a frantic expulsion of reassurances followed by the need to be reassured. 

_Everyone wants you at Spurs. You’re just not in form right now. But you will be, won’t you? You love Spurs, right?_

It’s not just the worries about Spurs, either. Whenever Eric talks about going back to Portugal or talks about his family coming to London, or suggests he might spend a weekend with his sister in Paris - even then, Dele’s hands set about finding something to anchor them together. He’ll lace their fingers or he’ll pull Eric in for a deep and frantic kiss. The way people kiss when they think they might never get the chance again.   

Any semblance of Eric leaving the room leads to, well, _this._ Dele lying on top of him and tangling their legs together, pressing kisses to Eric’s mouth to stop him from putting words to all of Dele’s fears. He clings to Eric’s hand or his waist or his shirt. Sometimes he drops to his knees. Anything to ensure Eric is rendered speechless. 

Dele has separation anxiety, and Eric’s annoyed at himself for taking so long to realise it. It was never because Dele was ‘cold’ that Eric wasn’t allowed to leave his side all day last Saturday, and it wasn’t because he was ‘tired’ that Dele didn’t let Eric pull out of him after sex last night. The whines that Dele makes when Eric leaves the room just to take a leak aren’t because Dele is ‘bored’.

It’s the separation anxiety.

“Dele,” Eric says softly. He looks down at the hem of his t-shirt clutched tightly in Dele’s fingers and exhales. Dele still won’t look at him, but his behaviour says it all. He can play cool and coy and disinterested all his wants, but his hands always give him away. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eric continues, trying to keep his tone gentle and reassuring. He covers Dele’s hand with his own. “Will you look at me?” 

Dele makes a noise in his throat and shakes his head. He keeps his eyes on the TV, his face away from Eric. 

“I just want to talk,” Eric says. He knows Dele is scared, he can feel it, but he tells himself that if they don’t have this conversation now then it’s just going to keep getting worse. “Please?” 

It takes a few seconds, but eventually Dele comes to his senses and lifts himself off of Eric’s chest. He sits up and smiles brightly like he doesn’t care in the world. For a moment, it’s just like normal Dele. The one he presents to the public and to the team and to his family - carefree, happy, relaxed. 

“What’s up?” He asks, playing dumb. Eric isn’t buying the innocent tone of voice and he isn’t buying the fake smile, either. 

“I want to talk about what’s going on with you.” 

“In training?” Dele asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Dele…” Eric sighs. “You know I don’t mean in training. I want to talk about you having separation anxiety.” 

“But I don’t,” Dele says simply, laughing off Eric’s accusation. He’s sitting on his heels in between Eric’s open legs and he can’t stop himself from idly stroking the inside of Eric’s thigh.

It’s like a compulsion that Eric has barely noticed because it happens so often now. Even when they’re bickering or arguing about something, Dele will suddenly reach out and take Eric’s hand. They won’t talk, sometimes won’t even look at each other, but it takes a _serious_ argument for Dele to let Eric’s hand go.

“You do sometimes, though,” Eric suggests tentatively. He wants to test the waters - not dive straight into the deep end. 

“Like when?” Dele asks. 

“Like when I went for a run that time,” Eric points out. He tries to make it sound like the memory has only just come back to him on a whim, rather than like he’s been collecting his arguments ready for this conversation for days in advance. “I got back and you thought I’d left, remember? You were pretty hysterical.” 

“You left your phone…” Dele mumbles. It’s a weak excuse, but Eric gives him it anyway. 

“I did, yeah, I know that’s weird to you.” 

“And you’d said the night before about wanting to run away.” 

“I’d also said I’d never leave you.” 

“Yeah…” Dele trails off, his gaze falling down to Eric’s stomach where his hands have found the string from the waistband of Eric’s joggers. He picks it up and wraps it around his finger. 

“And then those two weeks when you thought I was leaving Spurs and you would hardly ever let me leave the room without you. Even in training you-” 

“Yeah,” Dele interrupts, clearly embarrassed. He waves off the comment and inhales through his nose. He still won’t look at Eric. Still keeps just wrapping the string of Eric’s waistband tightly around his finger. “Well that was a misunderstanding.” 

“What about the beach day in Portugal…” 

Dele looks up immediately. His eyes are dark and hooded and probably full of hatred right now. Eric feels the guilt burning in his chest because he knows it’s far too soon to already be holding that over him. It was barely two weeks ago. Dele still has the faint scar on the bottom of his foot from where he stood on a rock and cut himself.

“I thought you’d gotten lost or hurt yourself, Diet,” Dele spits out bitterly. He’s clearly not loving having to defend himself against these accusations and, to be honest, Eric isn’t loving having to bring them up. 

The last thing Eric wants is for Dele to feel attacked. Not here, not in Eric’s home. _Their_ home. Dele deserves to feel safe here. But Eric has been holding back on this for a while now, and the behaviour has gotten so much worse since they got back from Portugal. Dele needs to know that these things added together _plus_ all the little things, like the excessive cuddling, the whining when Eric leaves the room, the insistence that they shower together _every_ morning, they all mean something. They’re all part of a bigger picture. 

“It wasn’t really a normal reaction to go running off twenty minutes up the beach, and then into a field,” Eric adds. He feels terrible having to say this, especially when Dele is already looking like a wounded animal.

Dele blinks, and then he unwraps the string from his fingers and places his hand flat on Eric’s stomach. His eyes glaze over and Eric can’t tell if Dele is looking _at_ him or _through_ him. Either way, it becomes obvious that Dele is absent from the room.

“Hey,” Eric says softly. He covers Dele’s hand and swallows the painful lump growing in his throat. “Hey, Del, look at me.” 

He doesn’t. 

“Please?” 

He still doesn’t. He’s just staring at Eric’s chest, eyes unfocused. 

“Come back to me,” Eric urges. He shakes Dele’s hand against his stomach and Dele suddenly takes a deep breath and looks up, meeting Eric’s worried gaze. 

“I don’t have separation anxiety,” Dele says, his voice breaking. His eyes are too wide, too dark, too sad. He looks like he might be about to cry. Eric just wants to wrap him up and kiss him and tell him that yes, he’s right, he doesn’t have separation anxiety and everything is fine. He wishes he could just take Dele up to bed and they both forget this conversation ever happened. 

And he would. He’d do that if he really believed this whole thing wasn’t affecting them or affecting Dele. But a few days ago, in training, Eric was pulled to one side by Perez for some stern words. Apparently when Eric had left the pitch to go work out in the gym, Dele’s form on the training ground had dropped considerably. He’d given away balls, fumbled his interceptions, couldn’t score a single goal against still-injured Juan Foyth and two of the academy kids. Which wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if Dele hadn’t been scoring screamers just fifteen minutes earlier when Eric was by his side. 

It didn’t take a genius to work out what the link was. Even Pochettino had noticed it. Everyone had. 

_Dele wants to know when your coming back_

_Hey Dele asked me to txt u. Says when r u coming to the pool??_

_Why is dele wearing your training shirt lol. Does he know?? It’s got your number on it._

_Did you and Dele come in together today?_

_Everyone is saying you and Dele went to Portugal together to meet your family. Sounds romantic lol. Is it true?_

Eric had managed to fob off most of the messages with an excuse, but more and more people were asking. Word about the Portugal trip had gotten out and Harry Kane was the first to pull Eric aside after training one night and ask if something was going on. 

“Yeah,” Eric had told him bluntly. “Yeah, something is going on.”

Harry had stared at him with wide eyes and a confused expression until Eric had simply walked away.

He didn’t even care about the gossiping. He didn’t care if people found out they were together. It was the other messages that worried him more. Like the one he got from Jan yesterday.

_What’s got into Dele lol? Stormed off the pitch when you left. Poch is furious._

Eric had only left to go and fill up his water bottle. 

“I love you,” Eric says gently. He strokes Dele’s finger with the pad of his own and tries to block out the sound of an argument happening on TV. He’s looking at Dele but Dele won’t meet his gaze. He’s just chewing his bottom lip, staring down at Eric’s hand on top of his own. “But I’m worried about-”

“I’ll prove it to you,” Dele says suddenly. He sucks in a breath and squares his shoulders. “I’ll prove to you that nothing is wrong with me. I can be apart from you. I don’t even like you that much, Diet, to be honest.” 

Eric is so taken aback by the statement that he can't help but laugh.

“Honestly, I don’t,” Dele continues, smiling now. His eyes are lit up against the glow of the fire and his cheeks are warm and flushed. Eric wants to kiss them. He wants to kiss them so bad. “I can easily go a whole day without even touching you.” 

“You think?” Eric asks, raising an eyebrow in doubt. 

“Easy,” Dele confirms. 

Their hands are still laced together though and Dele is still sitting in between Eric’s thighs and Eric very much still plans to take Dele up to bed to kiss every inch of his body. 

“You really think you can go a whole day? A whole twenty four hours without touching me?” 

“Yeah, I do.” Dele nods and shrugs lazily. He leans down and takes a few shaky breaths before looking up into Eric's eyes. "I honestly don't even like you that much," he whispers. And then Dele is kissing his mouth. The way people kiss when they think they might never get the chance again. Soft, careful, like he's trying to commit every second of it to memory. His hands are clinging to the hem of Eric's shirt.

"I love you," Eric breathes. 

Dele's bottom lip quivers before he regains his composure and forces a small smile. "Don't be so lame, Diet."

"Shut up, Dele."

Dele laughs a little and begins to untangle himself from Eric's clutches. Bit by bit, he pulls away, separates himself, creates distance between them that feels cold and empty and wrong, until he's sitting at the end of the sofa by himself and Eric is left lying out alone at the other end, wanting nothing more than Dele's familiar weight back on top of him. 

"So are we starting now or-" 

Eric shakes his head and feels his throat constrict. Too tight. Too painful. Feels cold and empty and wrong. He reaches out, grabs Dele's wrist, and pulls him flush back on top of him.

“Start tomorrow morning,” he murmurs against Dele’s lips. Dele smiles into the kiss and brings his hands to either side of Eric’s face. 

“If I can do this, you’ll let it go, yeah?” 

Eric pauses. He knows he has no choice but to agree, so he just hopes that it’s enough. He hopes that Dele not touching him for 24 hours will somehow fix all of this. Maybe Dele will shake the anxiety, or he’ll realise that Eric really isn’t leaving him. Maybe it will do them good, both of them. Dele can focus on his training and his form. Eric can focus on getting his story straight with Harry. It’s just 24 hours. They can manage that, right? 

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “Yeah. Twenty four hours from when we wake up. Then I’ll let it go.” 

Of course, they’ll have to set some rules. Things they can do and things they can’t. It would be unfair to say they can’t brush past each other in the dressing room or bump into one another on the training ground. But Eric knows there will be kissing, no hugs, no holding hands or gripping of shirts.

And if Dele can do this, then Eric will let it go.

 _If Dele can do this,_ Eric tells himself. His throat still feels tight and his jaw hurts. He’s thinking about not kissing Dele, not hugging him, not holding his hand as they walk back to their cars under the cover of darkness. 

He’s thinking about going a whole 24 hours without his boyfriend. 

_If Dele can do this, so can I._

He kisses one of Dele’s warm, flushed cheeks, and then the other. 

 _What if it affects your football?_ Eric’s mum had said to him in hushed tones. It was their last night in Portugal and Dele had gone off to bed, exhausted after a full day of playing with Eric’s nieces and nephews. Eric had snuck out onto the balcony and found his mum leaning against the railing, a half-empty glass of wine in her hand. She smiled at him slowly and hugged him. _Are you happy?_ She’d asked, holding his face in her hands. 

Eric had promised her that he was. 

As he looks at Dele now, with his warm, gentle smile and his dark brown eyes, he feels the happiness radiating in his heart again, the same way it had done on that night in Portugal when Eric had gone back to bed and woken Dele up with a smattering of kisses to his neck. _Yes, I’m happy._

He is. Happier than he's ever been.

_And it won’t affect your career? Your football?_

Eric had shaken his head at the time, said it wouldn’t. Said they were both professional and both knew how careful they had to be. Not just with the media, but with everything. Having a relationship within football was a completely unexplored territory. There were no maps, no guides, nothing to help them navigate what was in front of them. Eric has assured his mum that he knew this. He knew how hard it would be and he knew that their careers and their relationship would forever be intertwined. Both had to work simultaneously.  

As he looks at Dele now and feels Dele's lips against his own, he closes his eyes and remembers Jan’s text. 

_What’s got into Dele lol? Stormed off the pitch when you left. Poch is furious._

Eric had only gone to fill up his water bottle. That was it. He was gone for maybe a minute, at most.

Dele kisses him over and over, and Eric succumbs to it. He sinks into the sofa and lets Dele explore his mouth. It’s all he can do to silence the concern that is bubbling away inside of him. 

_And it won’t affect your career? Your football?_

That's why they have to do this test. That's why they have to start by creating distance between them and making sure they're both able to live with that. Because Eric knows that Dele’s separation anxiety _will_ affect their careers if they don’t do anything about it. 

The first step is getting Dele to acknowledge it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming soon: The Test.


	6. The Test

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're here, the end. Thank you for all the support and kudos. I love you all infinitely. 💕

_But I still get to see your face right?  
_ _And that's like nothing they can take, right?_

_\----_

_8:00am_

Eric wakes up at 8am to the sound of his phone vibrating on his bedside table. Once, then twice, then three times, until eventually he shifts from beneath the weight that is lying on the left side of his body. He leans over and grabs the phone, stabbing for the mute button blindly. 

One breath, then two. Eric fills his lungs and rubs his eyes. Slowly, the rest of his senses begin to wake up and his dream about being transferred out of Spurs fades away. Just one of the many nightmares he’s been having about that lately. In this one, he was shipped out to the Championship, but none of the teams there wanted him.

“Del,” Eric mumbles. He shakes the shoulder of the sleeping body next to him. “Del, it’s 8am.”

Dele groans in response and pulls his shoulder out of Eric’s hold. He buries himself further into the warmth of the bed, taking the duvet with him.

“Going in the shower,” Eric says. He’s still half asleep and his muscles ache from yesterday’s training - or maybe it’s from the sex in the kitchen. Either way, he’s desperate to feel the hot water cascading down his back. He leans over and finds Dele’s bare shoulder again, presses his mouth to it in a quick kiss like he does every morning. “I’ll let the dogs in.”

This is their routine. It’s how they start every morning. Alarm clock, shove, groan, kiss, dogs, shower. Eric always wakes up first, always shakes Dele’s shoulder, and then always follows it up with a kiss by way of apology. Dele always groans, pulls the duvet with him, and sleeps in an extra fifteen minutes. 

Eric learned a while back that the safest way to wake Dele up is to just let the dogs in. By the time Eric has wrestled himself out of the shower and into his training gear, Dele is usually sitting up in bed on his phone with the dogs clambering all over him. The dogs are strictly _not_ allowed on the bed, but that rule, along with many others, went out the window a long time ago.

So, just like every morning, Eric follows his routine. He presses a kiss to Dele’s bare shoulder and slips out of bed. The moment he opens the bedroom door, Clay and Cisco come bounding in around his feet. He gives them both some fuss before grabbing his towel and quietly disappearing into the bathroom.

It’s a morning just like any other. 

_8:20am_

It’s not until Eric is half way through his shower that he remembers. 

He’s found some fancy Dior body and shampoo in a cupboard - which he assumes is Dele’s - and is in the process of lathering it into his hair when he suddenly stops moving. The sluggish fog has cleared from his brain and memories of last night come flooding back to him. He’s no longer thinking about what he’ll be working on in training today, or about the conversation he’s going to have with the kit man, or whether or not they should get noodles on the way home instead of cooking. 

He’s not thinking about any of that, because he’s just remembered the talk he had with Dele last night. Love Island, the fire crackling, the dogs asleep on the floor next to them. The twenty four hour test.

_I’ll prove to you that nothing is wrong with me. I can be apart from you. I don’t even like you that much, Diet, to be honest._

It starts today. Now. Twenty four hours without touching each other, and then Eric will let it go. 

Eric takes a deep breath but it feels hollow. He has to take another, and then another. There’s shampoo everywhere, suds swimming at his feet. He’s used half the bottle up and he didn’t even realise. Dele’s going to be furious.

“Are you done?” Dele’s voice calls out suddenly. Eric jerks his head up but the door is still closed. Dele’s knocking on the other side. “I need a piss. Can I come in?” 

He does anyway. 

Eric grabs the shower head and tries to wash most of the foamy evidence down the drain before Dele can see. It doesn’t matter, though, because Dele is as unobservant as ever. He bursts into the bathroom and throws up the toilet seat, relieving himself before he’s even said hello. 

“Morning,” Dele smiles, turning to look at Eric in the shower. He’s holding his dick, pissing into the toilet, and his eyes are hungrily trailing down Eric’s wet body. “Can I join you?”

Eric shakes his head. “Can’t,” he manages. The words are getting stuck in his throat. There’s shampoo at his feet still, in his hair. It’s everywhere. And it smells like Dele’s skin right before they have sex. It smells like their evenings in front of the fire, legs tangled, mouths pressed together in lazy, undocumented kisses. 

“Why not?” Dele asks, furrowing his brow. He finishes up taking a leak and flushes the toilet. “It’s twenty past.”

“You can’t, remember?” Eric says quickly. He wants to get this conversation over and done with. “We’re doing the… thing. Twenty four hour thing.” 

“Oh,” Dele says, his shoulders sinking. There’s sleep in the corner of his eye and his hair is all over the place. He scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah.” 

“Sorry,” Eric says guility. He opens his mouth to say something more, but there’s nothing more to say. 

“Like twenty four hours in police custody,” Dele smiles weakly. Their favourite show. “Except it’s twenty four hours without Eric Dier.” 

“Yeah.” Eric does his best to shoot him a smile in response. It’s a funny joke, but Eric doesn’t feel like laughing. Somewhere in the back of his head he’s picturing Dele locked away in a cell by himself.

Dele glances around the room awkwardly. He keeps looking at Eric’s towel on the hand rail and it’s making Eric nervous. He wills Dele not to reach out and touch it.  

“I’ll go make the coffee, then?” Dele offers, pulling his eyes away from the towel. Eric breathes a sigh of relief under his breath. 

“Yeah, okay,” he answers. He nods, smiles, and wishes they weren’t having this conversation while Eric was naked. 

“Black, no sugars?” Dele asks. His voice is breaking. He looks like he’s going to cry. It’s just coffee, but this isn’t their normal routine. Eric makes the coffee. At 8:20am, Dele showers and Eric makes the coffee.

“Black, no sugar,” Eric confirms. 

Dele makes an affirmative noise in his throat. 

He’s gone before Eric can say anything more.

_8:40am_

They’re moving around the kitchen and talking about training when Eric opens the fridge door to get orange juice and Dele slides off his stool at the same time. They bump into each other accidentally, and Dele immediately goes to apologise.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“Dele, it’s fine,” Eric interrupts. He holds on to the fridge door instead of reaching out for Dele’s hand. “We can’t go the whole day without touching. We’ll be running into each other all the time on the training ground, and… and things like this, it’s fine. I don’t expect you to go the whole day without even accidentally bumping into me.” 

Dele smiles and impulsively curls his fingers around the hem of his own sweater. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah, makes sense.” 

Silence settles over the room before Eric clears his throat and closes the fridge door. 

_8:50am_

They drink their coffee and orange juice, say goodbye to the dogs, and set off for Hotspur Way as normal. Dele fiddles with the radio and complains about the heating in Eric’s car. Eric rolls his eyes and tells him there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the heating and that Dele is just _always_ cold because he has no meat on him. Dele makes a joke under his breath about Eric being chubby. It’s all just standard routine until Eric goes to playfully shove Dele’s knee. 

“Woah!” Dele exclaims dramatically, holding up his hands and edging away in his seat. “No touching, remember?” 

Eric’s still got his hand in mid-air. He lowers it back into his lap and smiles apologetically across at Dele. “Sorry.”

They both hum a short laugh while Dele pulls his feet up onto the seat. He sits the way a child sits, always fidgeting, always playing with the heating and the music and whatever he’s stowed away in Eric’s glove box. Sometimes it’s a fidget spinner, or a pen, or an empty crisp packet he’s shoved in there. He digs around inside the glove box but finds nothing interesting enough to pick out, so he closes it again and studies his hand instead. 

Eric keeps glancing at him, watching the way he picks at a small cut on his thumb. 

“Stop picking it or it won’t heal,” Eric scolds.  

“Does this mean I can say whatever I want now and you can’t do anything about it?” Dele asks, completely ignoring Eric’s comment, although he _does_ leave the cut alone for a moment.

“What?” 

Dele grins at Eric wolfishly. “Well, you can’t touch me. So I can say you’ve got a massive fat heat and a poor fashion sense and you can’t do anything about it.” 

“Dele, you’re making it sound like I domestically abuse you whenever you say those things normally.” 

“Well you _do_ leave marks on me,” Dele mutters, cocking his eyebrow. 

“You ask for those marks,” Eric frowns. 

“That’s what they all say.”

“Dele,” Eric makes a face and shakes his head, trying to clear his brain of this ridiculous conversation. “What are you talking about?”

“You can’t touch me,” Dele explains with a mischievous shrug. “So I’m just saying, I can call you fat head all day and as many times as I want.” 

Eric looks at him and barks a laugh. “You call me that _anyway._ ”

“But you can’t touch me,” Dele adds, again. His voice falters a little. 

“No,” Eric confirms. “I can’t.” 

“So I can just…” Dele’s sentence drifts off somewhere and he doesn’t quite find the words to finish it. He stares out of the window, the childish expression now cold and stoic. 

“Just what?” Eric asks.

Dele shrugs quickly. He goes back to picking the scab on his thumb. “Just saying.” 

“Saying what?

“Saying you can’t touch me!” Dele snaps. The mischievous flicker in his eyes has faded, replaced by something dark and distant and sad. “So it doesn’t matter, does it? Whatever I say. Doesn’t fucking matter. Because I can’t touch you and you can’t touch me. Because you think I’m mentally ill, or something-” 

And there it is. The first angry outburst. The break in the facade.

“Dele,” Eric begins, but he doesn’t get a chance to deliver his empty reassurances because Dele stops him. 

“Just drive, Diet.”

_10:00am_

The morning goes pretty much the way Eric is expecting it to. Dele can’t seem to settle on which emotion he wants to display, so he’s constantly flitting between sending Eric glares across the room and sliding up as close to him as possible _without_ actually touching him, and then looking at him all innocently, blinking as if he’s doing nothing wrong. 

It starts when they’re all milling around the canteen during breakfast hours. Eric’s walking up to get his food, chatting idly to Jan about the latest episode of a Spanish show they’re both watching. He’s about to pick up a tray when suddenly a hand reaches in front of him and snatches the tray away before he can take it. 

Dele barges past them, steps in front of them without a word, and rudely demands porridge with extra blueberries from the kitchen staff. 

Once he’s got his porridge, he marches off across the room to sit with Harry Winks. It’s only when he sits down that he finally looks back over his shoulder to give Eric is most unimpressed glare. Eric gives him a confused look in response, but Dele shrugs it off and turns back to Winks instead. 

After that, it happens every time they’re in the same room. Dele either gives him the cold shoulder or makes a point of crowding his space. Sometimes he wants to be as far away as possible, other times his body betrays him and he can’t help but hover at Eric’s side, seemingly just as annoyed at himself as he is at Eric.

It’s 10am and they’re all in the dressing room getting changed. Eric’s sorting through his training shirts and making a mental note to speak to the kit man about his new jacket being too small. Jan’s next to him, showing him videos of Layla and Llay dancing to Baby Shark. On his other side, Lucas is singing in Portuguese while tying up his shoe laces. It’s a normal, upbeat atmosphere throughout the dressing room.

“Eric, we are playing Uno,” Serge calls out. Eric glances up to see Serge, Moussa, and Danny Rose playing Uno in the middle of the room. He’s being beckoned over to join them. “You want to play?” 

Before Eric can answer, Dele immediately stands up on the other side of the room and clears his throat.

“I’ll play!” He says loudly. He skips over to the Uno table and turns his back to Eric. 

None of the other guys bother asking Eric again, so Eric just sinks back against the wall and tries not to let the hurt show on his face.

“You two fallen out, no?” Jan asks quietly. 

Eric stares at Dele’s back and feels it snag at his heart. He knew Dele would get angry about this, but he wasn’t expecting it to feel so personal. It feels like they’ve broken up and Eric has to keep reminding himself that they haven’t. He has to keep quietly telling himself that Dele does, in fact, still love him. Even if he’s angry and jealous and sometimes childish, he still loves Eric. None of this is real. None of it is-

“Eric?” Jan waves a hand in front of Eric’s face. Eric blinks and brings the room back into focus. 

Dele’s looking back at him over his shoulder again. Eric meets his gaze and smiles meekly.

_Just give me something to tell me you still love me._

Dele gives him the same distant, cold stare he’s been giving him ever since they got to Hotspur Way, and then he turns back to the game and laughs loudly at something Serge is saying.

They haven’t broken up but it feels like they have. They’re still in love, but it feels like they’re not. 

It’s 10am and the hurt is already written all over Eric’s face.

_11:00am_

“Eric, _Eric!_ ” 

It’s Winksy’s voice who screams his name up the pitch. Eric is barrelling forwards towards the box of his opponents - Hugo Lloris, Jan Vertonghen, and Danny Rose - and Winksy has just made the perfect through ball to him. He’s got the ball at his feet, he’s got strength on his side, and he’s got the top right corner of the net in his sights. He _just_ needs to get past Jan. 

With a turn that surprises them both, Eric manages to slip the ball around Jan’s feet. He’s clear, but he barely has a second to line up his shot before Danny is running at him with a face of pure determination. If Eric scores right now, then the Youngsters have won. There’s barely 30 seconds left of the game.

He connects with the ball perfectly, watches as it floats through the air, straight past Hugo’s outstretched arm. He watches as it sinks into the top right corner of the net. 

“ _Dieeeerr_!” Lucas calls out. Eric’s grinning from ear to ear when Lucas jumps on his back. 

The rest of the Youngsters follow to join in the celebration. It’s a 4-3 victory that seals a third consecutive win for the Youngsters three weeks in a row. Something the whole team take _very_ seriously. 

“Offside,” Danny shouts angrily, ripping off his bib. He throws it to the ground and storms away, but Eric can’t react anyway because he’s still got Lucas on his back and now Juan Foyth is scrubbing his head and Winks and Kane are both crowding his space.

Everyone has come over to celebrate.

Everyone except for Dele. 

Eric turns just in time to see Dele walking off the pitch, showing no interest at all in celebrating Eric’s goal, even though he’s one of the Youngsters. He links up with Danny and they seem to be saying something to each other - Eric can’t work out what. Danny laughs. Dele does too. _They’re laughing at me._ Lucas is shouting in his ear. Harry Winks is trying to hug him. Everything’s too fucking loud and Dele and Danny are walking away, back into the training centre. Dele doesn’t even afford him a hateful look over his shoulder.

Eric’s heart sinks painfully.

_11:30am_

A clash like this was always going to be inevitable _We’ll be running into each other all the time on the training ground._ It finally happens just like Eric said it would.

At 11:30am, they’re back out on the pitch doing drills in two teams. They’re dribbling the ball around cones, passing, shooting, and then running back into position to start it all over again. Dele and Eric are split up and put in separate groups.

“You are not talking?” Jan asks breathlessly. He keeps his voice low enough that only Eric can hear his question. Eric does his best to look confused. They only have maybe thirty seconds before it will be Eric’s turn to run the drill again. 

“You and Dele? You are not talking, no?” Jan continues. He hides his mouth behind his hand and catches his breath. 

“Huh?” Eric says, feigning innocence. He bounces up and down on the spot to look busy. “We’re fine.” 

“Why does he keep looking at you like you are not friends?” Jan raises an eyebrow. “He has been angry with you all morning, Eric.” 

“I beat him at Fifa last night,” Eric says quickly, falling back onto the first lie he can come up with. He shoots Jan a quick smile and turns his body to stretch his arms. “He’ll get over it.” 

“Is everything okay?” Jan asks. He’s looking at Eric in a way that’s making Eric feel a bit sick. Jan wouldn’t be asking this if it was anyone else, so why is he asking it about Dele and Eric? Why can’t everyone just leave them alone?

“Yeah, are you and Toby?” Eric snaps. He knows he sounds ridiculous but he can’t help it, because Jan’s right. Dele _does_ keep looking at Eric like they’re not friends. Eric doesn’t know what’s going on anymore. He doesn’t know if it’s just part of their ‘we’re just friends’ act of if it’s because of this stupid test or if it’s more. If it’s real. He doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t. 

“Why would we-”

Eric doesn’t hang around to answer anymore of Jan’s questions. He takes a ball and sets off across the pitch for the drill. In the corner of his eye, he can see Dele has set off at the same time as him. They’re a mirror image of each other, dribbling the ball through cones but on opposite sides of the pitch. Dele on the left wing, Eric on the right. They glance up at each other then quickly look away. 

They finish the first part of the drill at the same time. Eric’s already out of breath but he pushes to keep up with Dele, sprints up the pitch to reach the goal at the same time. They have to pass to a teammate in the box, which in Eric’s case is Harry Kane and in Dele’s case Erik Lamela, and then they have to wait for the passback before shooting. 

It all happens in perfect synchronisation. They get to the box at the exact same second but Lamela’s pass is a little off target and Dele has to dash to his right to collect it. Harry’s is perfectly lined up, fast and efficient. Eric stumbles straight into Dele’s path and they clatter without even meaning to. Eric takes most of the impact to his leg and ankle, instantly forcing him to the floor.

It’s more the shock than the pain that causes him to yelp. He didn’t realise Dele was so close, or that they were running at each other without realising until the last second. He doesn’t expect to suddenly be crumbling to the floor with Dele tripping over him a split second later. 

On impulse, Eric reaches out to catch him. 

Dele falls awkwardly on Eric’s arm and it causes them both a bit of pain. Eric grimaces while Dele rolls off of him and scrambles to get to his feet, holding his ribs where they fell against Eric’s forearm. 

“Are you okay?” Eric asks frantically. His hip is throbbing but he ignores it, looking up at Dele who’s wincing and rubbing his side. “Dele? Are you okay? I’m sorry- I didn’t- I didn’t see you.” 

Dele continues rubbing away the irritation on his ribs. He groans and stretches, testing there’s no lasting damage. There doesn’t seem to be, so he nods at Lamela that he’s okay and then runs off to join the rest of his team again.

Eric stays on the floor, looking at the space where Dele was standing just seconds ago. He can’t even process what just happened, or why Dele acted like Eric wasn’t even _there._ It was like Eric was completely invisible. A ghost. 

He stares at the grass in confusion until Harry walks over to him and picks him off the ground, brushes him down. 

“You good, mate?” Harry asks him. 

Eric nods dumbly. He’s not good. His hip is throbbing and he’s twisted his ankle and his arm hurts from where Dele fell on it. And then there’s the issue of Dele refusing to even acknowledge him. He’s not good at all. Not even close.  

“Yeah,” he says. “All good.” 

_1:00pm_

Eric stirs the rice around his plate aimlessly. The plate is a bit dirty around the edges and he wants to complain to someone about it. The plates really should be kept clean. What if there was some bacteria on it and one of the players got ill and couldn’t play? Would anyone be held accountable? Eric figures they probably don’t have people washing the plates. It will be an industrial dishwasher like they have in restaurants. Still, there’s a tiny stain on the edge of Eric’s plate and it’s putting him off his food. He hasn’t eaten a thing. 

“You are not eating?” Jan observes. 

Eric doesn’t even know at what point Jan sat down at his table. He swears he was completely alone the last time he checked, but now that he’s been brought out of his sluggish daydream, he can see that Jan, Toby, and Christian have sat down at the table with him. Eric glances at their plates. Jan and Christian are halfway through their meals. Jan has finished. _How long have you been here?_ Eric wonders. 

“The plate is dirty,” Eric says. He surprises himself with how dry and broken his voice sounds. He gulps down water from his glass and clears his throat to avoid Toby’s concerned expression.  

“You love the rice and salmon, no?” Jan continues. He has a way of asking questions like they’re completely meaningless. Like he’s just making idle conversation, and not like he’s trying to get to the bottom of Eric’s foul mood. 

“The plate is dirty.” 

Eric sits back in his seat and lifts his eyes from the table and across the room. He watches Dele laughing and joking with Harry Winks and Kyle Walker-Peters. Everything else is just noise. All the bustling in the canteen, the people moving in and out of Eric’s peripheral vision - it’s all just a blurry noise that he doesn’t care about. All he can see is the side of Dele’s face as it lights up, accommodating his wide, happy smile. He’s laughing at something Kyle is saying and all Eric can think is _I wish that was me._

He desperately wants to be over on that table, making Dele laugh like that. 

But then the images of last night come racing back. Dele sitting between Eric’s legs on the sofa, wrapping the string from the waistband of Eric’s joggers around his little finger, cutting of circulation. The way his bottom lip had quivered when Eric suggested for the fourth time that Dele might have separation anxiety. The way Dele had taken a shaky breath, then insisted he really didn’t like Eric all that much anyway. 

He doesn’t make Dele laugh. He just makes Dele angry and upset and anxious. What kind of relationship is that? 

Eric had thought it was sort of cute at first, that Dele didn’t like being away from him for too long. He liked Dele clambering after him when Eric had to leave the bed to go let the dogs out. He liked that they shared showers in the morning and kissed clumsily under the water. He liked that Dele would text him if he was upstairs and Eric was downstairs making hot drinks. _Miss u, come back x x_

Eric had loved that. 

But what kind of person loves being the cause of their boyfriend’s anxiety? What kind of person goes for a long run and doesn’t bother to let their sleeping boyfriend know where they’re going? What kind of person just lets their boyfriend believe they might be leaving the club they both play for? What kind of person doesn’t invite their boyfriend to Portugal to meet their family? What kind of person runs away on the beach and leaves their boyfriend alone in a foreign country with people who haven’t yet warmed to him?

Eric realises, as he’s pushing his cold rice around his dirty plate, that he’s been a horrible, terrible boyfriend. And maybe it’s no wonder that it’s messed Dele up a bit.

Maybe it’s karma, then, that Kyle is one to be making Dele smile and laugh like that, and not Eric. 

Because what kind of person is Eric, to think that after all of this, he deserves Dele? 

_1:30pm_

Eric finishes up his lunch early so he can go and talk to the kit man about his jacket. And by finish up early, what he means is he scrapes his cold, uneaten food into the waste bin and tries to ignore the questioning glances from Sebastian, who is probably witnessing Eric throwing away food for the very first time in his life. Once he’s discarded the evidence of his non-existent appetite, he sulks off out of the canteen and away from Jan’s probing questions and Dele’s bright smiles. It’s all just a bit too much right now.

Instead, he wanders around the training ground, venturing down empty corridors and touching the artwork on the walls. He actually stops to read some of the stories that have been printed about past players and the work that the club have done for the local community. They’re nice stories. 

‘Spurs duo help build local school’.

‘Players visit hospital to deliver Christmas presents to sick children’.

Eric hopes that one day he might make the hall of fame too. He wants to help build schools and bring presents to sick kids. He wants to be remembered for more than just goals and clean sheets and pass completion. He wants to be up here, his photo in black and white, accompanied by a headline about how he changed people’s lives for the better.

But right now, that feels very far off. He can’t even change his own life for the better. He can’t even make his boyfriend ha- 

_No._

Eric blocks out the poisonous thoughts that keep swimming around in his brain. He’s too tired, too hurt to think about it anymore. His body is aching almost as much as his heart is. He just wants a break now. He doesn’t want to play this game anymore, or do this test anymore, or feel like _this_ anymore. But he can’t quite bring himself to tell Dele that, because there’s this sickening worry inside of him that for Dele, this isn’t a game or a test. Rather, it’s a polite way of ending their relationship. 

_No._

Eric forces himself to the offices of the kit team and knocks on the door. He’s told to enter and he steps inside, grateful for the short window of distraction. 

_2:20pm_

At 2:20pm, Jan corners Eric again, and this time he doesn’t let Eric get away so easily. 

“What is going on?” He demands. They’ve found themselves alone in the dressing room because everyone else is still on the training pitch and Eric came in to get some water. He should have known Jan was going to follow him.

“Nothing’s going on,” Eric says without much effort or care. He places his bottle beneath the tap of the water fountain and huffs a small sigh of annoyance when Jan slides up too close to him.

“I know you and Dele have fallen out. Is it bad?” 

“Does it matter?” Eric asks loudly, the irritation clawing up his throat. He quickly checks that there is definitely no one else around. “Even if we have fell out, so what? Why does it matter, Jan? Why do you care?”

Jan looks taken aback for a moment. He steps out of Eric’s space and frowns at him. “Because I am your friend, both of you, and because I care about you.” 

Eric turns back to the water. He watches the bottle filling up and keeps his mouth shut. 

“I am worried about you. You and Dele are in a very precarious situation, no? You still have not told anybody and I am worried this is hard for you and is-” 

“What are you talking about?” Eric asks hotly. “What do you mean? Precarious situation, what does that mean? What are you saying?” 

“You are in a relationship, no?” Jan says simply. As honest and as calm as ever. 

Eric stares at him and blinks. There’s water running down his hand because the bottle has overflowed, but he can’t seem to move his hand to turn off the tap. The water just keeps cascading down the side of the bottle, disappearing into the drain. Eric chews the inside of his mouth in an attempt to distract himself from how tight and raw his throat feels. Everything aches - his jaw, his hip, his heart. It’s all hurting. It’s all broken or bruised. He’s messed everything up. 

“I don’t think he loves me anymore.” Eric’s voice comes out too small, too broken. “I thought he couldn’t be apart from me, and he’s proved that he can be. He’s proved to me that he doesn’t need me, better, even- better, I think… better.” Eric slams the tap shut and stumbles forward. He can’t seem to get enough air in his lungs no matter how hard he breathes. “He’s realised now… realised, Jan- doesn’t need me. Better without.” 

Jan reaches out and places a hand on Eric’s shoulder to steady him. He looks Eric in the eye and shakes his head firmly. 

“That’s not true,” he says. “Dele loves you.” 

“I’m a terrible boyfriend,” Eric chokes out. It’s all coming up too fast now. He can’t control it. Can’t stop it. “I’ve been so shit, Jan. I made him anxious and then acted like it was his fault, like… like something is wrong with him. There’s nothing wrong with him- it’s me. It’s _me!_ I’m the one- me! But it’s too late, I pushed him away, and… and now-”

“Eric, calm down,” Jan interrupts. He’s holding both of Eric’s shoulders, leading him to the bench, sitting him down. He forces Eric to bring the bottle of water to his mouth so he can drink from it. Eric shakes his head but Jan won’t take no for an answer. “Just drink, and breathe.” 

“I have to-” 

“You have to calm down, Eric. You are saying all of these things and I think none of them are true. Why do you think you have pushed him away? It is not true.” 

“The test…” 

“What test?” 

Eric sets the water bottle down on the bench and lets his face fall into his hands. “The fucking test. I made him-” Eric stops, realisation washing over him in another nauseating wave. _Oh._

He didn’t make Dele do anything. The test wasn’t Eric’s idea, it was Dele’s. Dele wanted this to happen. He wanted to prove to Eric that they can be apart, that they _should_ be apart. It was all Dele’s idea. This was Dele’s way of breaking up with Eric in a way that felt somewhat mutual. After all, Eric had agreed to the test.

“You made him what?” Jan presses. Eric shakes his head and tries to get up from the bench. He has to go outside and throw up, or go home, or run for hours and hours until his legs give in and then maybe finally, _finally_ he’ll be able to breathe again. 

“Have to go.” 

“Eric, sit down,” Jan pleads. “You are getting very upset and I think we all need to just-” 

“Stop it, Jan!” Eric shouts. He stands up and pushes Jan out of his way. “I need to go, please, just let me go.” 

Jan sighs and steps back, letting Eric storm out of the dressing room alone. 

_2:28pm_

“Eric, I’ve been looking for you!” 

Eric’s just stumbled into the car park of Hotspur Way when he hears Harry Kane’s unmistakable voice calling after him. He pauses on the gravel and takes a deep breath, then another. Harry’s going to ask him what’s wrong, why he’s leaving, why he’s been acting funny all day, but Eric’s got nothing left in him to give. No words of explanation, no reassurances that everything is fine. He’s just… empty. 

“Where are you going?” Harry asks breathlessly. He steps outside to join Eric and Eric shakes his head to signal he really can’t talk right now. 

“Don’t feel well,” Eric manages. He still can’t seem to get ahold of his voice or his breathing. Everything in his chest feels shallow and tight. So he’s not exactly lying.

He goes to move away from Harry but Harry reaches out and grabs his wrist. 

“Dele’s asking for you, he got injured.” 

“What?” Eric stops short. 

“In training, he clashed with Moussa, he’s in the infirmary now being assessed. I don’t think it’s anything long-term but he’s asking for you.” 

“He… he’s in the infirmary?” Eric repeats. The tightness in his chest gets worse. He can barely breathe at all now. “He’s…”

“He’s asking for you,” Harry finishes. He beckons Eric back into the building and holds the door open for him.

Eric follows without hesitation. 

There are too many questions running through Eric’s mind right now for him to be able to think clearly. _How did he get hurt? Will he be okay? Is he asking for me because he wants to tell me something? Is it over? Are we over? Will he be okay? Are we okay? I still love him, does he still love me?_

He blocks it all out and just focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. Harry’s talking, explaining what happened in training between Moussa and Dele - something about Dele being distracted and not looking where he was going. Something about Dele being distracted all day, actually. Something about how he’s not been playing right for a few weeks now. 

And yeah, Eric knows. 

“Eric,” Harry stops suddenly and Eric almost crashes into the back of him. There’s an apologetic look on his face. Eric already knows what’s coming next. “I don’t mean to intrude, and I know it’s your personal life and nothing at all to do with what you bring to the pitch, but are you and Dele okay?”

“Yeah,” Eric lies dryly. He just wants to get to the infirmary.

“You both seem distant today.” 

“Do we?”

“Dele hasn’t been putting in his best performances and today, after you left, he…” Harry trails off but Eric stares at him expectantly. _He what, Harry? Said he hated me? Said he doesn’t need me on the pitch anymore? Said the team don’t need me on the pitch anymore?_ “He went and spoke to Pochettino about why you haven’t been getting much game time lately. Apparently he was quite angry about it, threatened to leave the club if you were ever sold. I don’t know what happened in that office but when he came back onto the pitch he wouldn’t talk to anyone. He wasn’t paying attention to anything. That’s how he ended up accidentally clashing with Moussa.” 

“What?” Eric asks blankly. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would Dele be concerned with Eric’s game time after everything that’s happened today? Why would Dele care about that at all - after everything that Eric has done?

Harry seems to sense Eric’s disorientation and smiles at him sympathetically. “You know,” he says, placing his hand on Eric’s shoulder. “When he first told me about you two, I always remember, we were sitting in the dressing room alone and he’d spent a few minutes trying to build up the courage to talk. Kept pacing around, you know how he does. He told me, said he feels like every time you leave the room, all he’s doing is just waiting for you to come back, and then he asked me if that’s what love is.” 

Eric’s eyes drift out of focus as he suddenly remembers lying on his bed with Dele just after they’d slept together for the first time. Neither of them wanted to call it anything more than casual sex back then, but Eric remembers that Dele was the first one to ever bring the L word into the room. 

 _What do you think love actually is?_ Dele had asked nonchalantly, lounging out across Eric’s bed wearing nothing but Eric’s shirt. Eric had shrugged and pulled his boxers back up around his hips. He’d turned, and in that moment he’d taken a mental image of Dele lying almost-naked on his bed, completely carefree, playing with the hem of Eric’s shirt that buried him - just in case he never got the chance to see this again.  

 _When you find someone you can’t live without?_ He’d answered easily.

“I... uh,” Eric begins, shaking Harry’s hand from his shoulder. “I need to see him.” 

_2:45pm_

He’s made to wait. 

Dele’s inside, being assessed for any nicks or bruises or sprains, which means Eric is made to wait.

So he sits on the bench opposite the door to the sports infirmary, and he waits.

_3:10pm_

“You can go in now,” Ryan says, opening the door and making Eric jump. He’d been so lost in his thoughts about everything he wanted to say to Dele that he hadn’t even realised almost half an hour had passed. He stands up and balls his hands nervously inside the pockets of his joggers. 

“Is he okay?”

Ryan smiles and nods at him, still holding the door. “Yes, he’s fine, just bruised his shoulder. He’ll be on low-impact training for a few days but he should be okay for the weekend.” 

Eric breathes a sigh of relief and nods. 

“He’s asking for you,” Ryan adds.

“I heard,” Eric answers quietly. He’s prepared himself for this. The ‘we’re better as just friends’ speech. He knows it’s coming and it’s inevitable and that, really, he only has himself to blame for it. “Could you give us a few minutes?”

Ryan grants them time to talk and disappears towards the canteen in search of coffee. Eric hovers in the doorway, his mind a sluggish mess of all the things he wants to apologise for and all the things he’s expecting Dele to say to him. He doesn’t know if he’ll come out of this room with a boyfriend or not. He doesn’t know if he’s even going in with one. 

And it just _had_ to be here that it all ends. The sports infirmary, where Eric has spent far too much time this past year wondering if he’ll ever be fit enough to get back into the team, or if Poch will simply give up and sell him. The familiar medical smell makes his stomach churn. 

Dele shouldn’t be here.  Dele should be at home, _their home._ He should be lounging out across Eric’s bed with his cheeks flushed and a carefree smile playing on his lips. He should be wearing Eric’s shirt which buries him, but which keeps him warm and safe. He should be asking _what do you think love actually is?_

And Eric should be right there with him, answering: _it’s this._

 _This. Them. Us._ That’s what love is.

“Are you just going to stand there, Diet, or are you going to come in?” Dele’s voice rings out. Eric looks up and sees Dele perched on the end of a medical bed, legs swinging beneath him, hands tucked away under his thighs. There’s a sad smile playing on his lips when he adds, “don’t worry, I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.” 

Eric walks into the room without even processing it. His legs move for him until he’s standing in front of Dele, and then the next thing he knows, he’s pulling Dele into his arms, and they’re holding each other so tightly that Eric can barely breathe. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” he confesses into the side of Dele’s neck. He can feel the tears stinging his eyes, spilling down his face, but he can’t stop them. “I don’t want to do this test, Dele. I don’t want you to not touch me or kiss me. I don’t want you to leave me. Please don’t leave me.” His voice comes out strained and ugly. He’s clutching the front of Dele’s shirt. He can’t let go. 

Dele’s shushing him, holding him, kissing the side of his face. 

But Eric can’t let go. 

“Please, _please,_ don’t leave me.”

“Eric,” Dele says, for the fourth or maybe fifth time. He lifts Eric’s head from his chest and forces him to meet his gaze. “I’m not leaving you.” 

“But… today,” Eric chokes out. Dele brings his hands to the side of Eric’s face and uses his thumb to wipe away the tears burning Eric’s cheeks.

“Today has been horrible,” he says quietly. “I can’t fucking play without you, Eric. I can’t focus, I can’t think, I can’t stand it. I tried to give you space, I tried, but it fucking hurts. I know it’s bad. Everything you said last night was true. I overreact to everything, I get worried when you’re gone and I don’t know where you are and-” 

Eric shakes his head. _No, no, no, I’m the problem, me!_ He wants to tell Dele that he got it all wrong. He wants to tell Dele that _he’s_ the one who has broken down today after just seven hours. That all he can think about is kissing Dele’s bare shoulder in bed this morning and how he’s had a lump the size of a golf ball in his throat every time he thinks about that. 

“Dele-”

“Eric, let me just… let me say this.” Dele takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “I’ve never had a fucking relationship before, okay? So I don’t know what I’m doing. I know I’ve been suffocating you a bit and I hold you too close but it’s just because I’m so fucking scared. I don’t want to lose you, or lose this. It’s the first thing I’ve ever cared about more than football and that… that terrifies me.”

“I love you,” Eric says. It’s the only thing he can manage right now. “I’m so sorry, for pushing you away. I don’t ever want to do that again. I don’t. I just- it’s everything, isn’t it? It’s our careers… it’s our friends… our team. It feels like… like _everything_ -” 

“Like everything is on the line,” Dele finishes, nodding. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and exhales softly. “Like we have so much more at risk.” 

“On Sunday, when I went inside to fill my water bottle and you stormed off the pitch, I just, I kept thinking, over and over, that we can’t be like that, you know? That if we were going to be _that_ attached then we’d never make it-” 

“Wait, what?” Dele pulls back a little, lets his hand fall down the side of Eric’s face until it comes to rest on the side of his neck. “What are you talking about? Do you think I stormed inside because you left to fill up your water bottle?”

Eric stares at him blankly. 

“Diet, I’d just spoken to you about how well Harry had taken the whole thing, I- I’d told him, about how I wanted to tell the whole team, how I wanted to tell Pochettino. You barely reacted. I was pissed off that you didn’t seem as enthusiastic about telling everyone. I don’t think you were even listening.”

“You were talking about us?” Eric mumbles. The only memory he has of that moment is Dele bounding up to him on the pitch, babbling excitedly about something Harry said. Eric had been watching Jan take a free kick on the other side of the pitch. He’d turned and smiled at Dele, feeling a little guilty that he hadn’t been listening to what he was saying. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I do, I want to tell everyone. God, I- I thought-” 

“I _can_ be apart from you, Diet. I just don’t want to be.”

Eric laughs despite himself. He presses his forehead against Dele’s and closes his eyes, trying to process all the ways in which he’s completely and utterly misunderstood what’s been happening. He’s been stupid. He’s been so _so_ stupid. He really thought that Dele didn’t want him anymore. _Dele._ Who sleeps in Eric’s shirts and shares Eric’s showers and whines when Eric leaves the room to take a leak. _Dele._ Who frets over transfer rumours and who freaks out when Eric goes missing for an hour and who _still_ insists he wants to spend more time with Eric’s family despite them not giving him the warmest welcome. 

Because Dele loves him. 

Because when Eric leaves the room, all Dele does is wait for him to come back.

“Kiss me,” Dele says, laughing against Eric’s mouth. “Kiss me, you big idiot.”

Eric does, and in the brief second that his eyes flutter open, he sees the clock on the wall behind Dele.

3:17pm 

Which means they lasted seven hours and seventeen minutes apart. All because of thirty seconds when Eric wasn’t listening. And maybe they’re both too emotional, and both too attached. And maybe at some point they’ll work on that - but in the infirmary room at Hotspur Way, and with Dele’s mouth on his and the clock ticking on, Eric takes a little comfort in knowing that whatever _this_ is, whether it’s separation anxiety or just fucking _love,_ that at least they _both_ feel it.

This.

Them.

_Us._

_\----_

_I still love you, though_  
_I still love you, though_  
_I still love you always_  
_So hold me when I'm home, keep the evenings long_  
_Let's not crack and break and part ways._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song lyrics are from An Evening I Will Never Forget by Dermot Kennedy, which I listened to on repeat whilst writing this chapter.


End file.
